The English Teacher
by The Phantom of the Death Star
Summary: Ten Final Fantasy characters, an evil English teacher, and me. My English class will certainly be interesting…
1. Prologue

Prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy, okay?

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Lunch was over, it was the first day of school and I did not want to go to my next class. But the bell had rung and I was saying what felt like a final good-bye to my friends. "What class do you have next?"

"I have Sato, Math. You?"

"I've got English, with Mrs. Randal." Everyone in the vicinity gave me a look of pity, everyone in the school knew the teacher who had broken the spirits of students for as long as anyone could remember, they said she was the last alive of the original teachers at the school.

I looked at the schedule paper in my hand. _Randal, English, Room 266._ I looked down the interminable hall of the 200s wing and began to make my way to a classroom which was legendarily the scene of an unsolved murder.

I knew I would be early, but I was surprised when I saw only one other student in the room. I was even more surprised when I noticed who it was.

He was sitting at his desk and his back was to me, but none the less, I could see the purple SOLDIER uniform and the impossibly spiky blonde hair. He turned when he heard me enter the room and his mako-blue eyes flashed in my direction. I stared at him for a moment, disbelieving.

"There's a seating chart." Cloud pointed to the long desk to the right of the classroom. He was right; there was in fact a clipboard on which a map of the classroom was printed. I walked over and looked down at it, searching for my name, trying to ignore the big bright blue eyes burning holes in my back.

Names other than my own jumped out at me from the paper, Valentine, Highwind, Kisaragi, Gainsburough. Crescent? If I was shocked to find Cloud in my English class, I was positively petrified to see ten Final Fantasy VII names on the seating chart.

This was going to be an interesting year.

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Note: I hope you're intrigued. I have two chapters finished, and will poast them when I feel like it. 


	2. Day 1: Part 1

Day 1: Part 1

Own Final Fantasy? Yah, I wish.

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I was sitting at my assigned desk at the front right of the room waiting for the other members of the class to come in. I heard the door open and looked around. A girl had entered. She had short hair, a headband and shorts and a shirt that blatantly violated the dress code by about five inches. "Hiya, Cloud!" Cloud nodded to her, she smiled then turned her attention to me. "Who are you?"

"My name is Nicole," I replied slightly warily.

"Hi, Nicole, nice to meet you. My name is Yuffie!"

"Hi, Yuffie." She ignored my response and sauntered over to the seating chart, then to her desk one row behind me and one desk to the left. She turned to see other people enter the classroom. "Hi, Aerith, Cid, Vincent! There's a seating chart." She pointed.

Yuffie received varied responses from the entering people. Cid seemed to be in a particularly bad mood and snarled in response to the cheery greeting.

Vincent was deliberately hanging to the back of the crowd. Instead of sitting where he was assigned, he walked back to the door to meet one of the people now entering the room. He spoke quietly to Lucrecia and pointed out her assigned seat to her, just to my left. She smiled at him, nodded and went to sit where she was assigned.

I watched as more distinctly recognizable people entered the classroom; Barrett, Tifa, and Reeve, who, I noticed, was the only one carrying a backpack.

The door closed, a pause, then the door opened again, and a figure dressed entirely in black leather with silver hair past his waist Strode in. He scanned the classroom with an air of what could be classified as disapproval, and then stalked to the only open desk in the room.

As I watched him I realized that something was wrong, not only with Sephiroth, but with everyone else too. I looked across the room and saw Vincent. _He's young… _I understood what had been bugging me then; _They are all so young, all about my age… the only one who isn't different is Yuffie. _

I turned around in my chair to look at Cid. "I know you guys."

"Know us? What do you mean 'know us'?" He glared at me.

"I… I don't really know… I mean, you're Cid Highwind." I felt dazed, unsure what I should say. I had the feeling I get when I think I'm about to die.

"How the hell do you know my name?" Cid looked around furiously.

"I know you. You're all from the game… Final Fantasy Seven."

"Sit down." The order came from the door to the teacher's office. I jumped slightly then froze. I hadn't realized that I was standing. I turned to face Mrs. Randal. "That will be enough. Sit down."

I sat and looked up at the teacher. She was tall, stick thin and seemed very old. She looked intimidating with white skin, black and white hair, black clothes and red painted nails. Her eyes were also a deep red.

"As you all know," the teacher paused dramatically, "I am here to teach you the advanced conventions of the English language." She folded her arms, "For those of you who are…" There was a silence in the room in which you could have heard a feather drop on carpeting. "_Predisposed_… I can teach you the greatest achievement of mankind and the reason for the phrase 'the pen is mightier than the sword'" There was another blood chilling pause. "But some of you who may feel that your abilities are so great…" She walked slowly down the side of the classroom, like some old alley cat sniffing out a young mouse. "That it justifies…" Her voice had softened to nearly a hiss. She was coming around the back of the room, eyes locked on Sephiroth, who wasn't looking at her. His head was resting in one hand, silver hair trailing down one side of the desk. He looked like he was asleep. "A lack of ATTENTION!" Mrs. Randal slammed her open palm onto Sephiroth's desk. He jumped away from the noise, nearly falling out of his chair in shock.

"Your name?" she snarled at him.

Sephiroth was leaning away from her as far as possible without falling to the floor, his chest heaving in shock. "S-Se-Sephiroth…"

Mrs. Randal's dry-blood-colored eyes narrowed. "The one with no last name."

"Yes, actually, is that a problem?"

Mrs. Randal glowered and the lights in the room seemed to dim, like a candle flame in a biting cold breeze. "Do not," her voice was as venomously soft as a hissing Zolom egg, "_ever_ talk back to me." Mrs. Randal walked away from Sephiroth and picked up the clipboard to which the seating chart was attached. She stood once more in the front of the room and looked at the chart. "Brent."

I jumped, wondering what she had called my name for, and then I realized that she was taking role. I raised my hand. "That's me." I received a scowl for my individuality.

"Crescent."

"Here." Lucrecia raised a hand to about the level of her head in a timid way.

"Gainsburough."

"Here." Aerith seemed to have slightly more confidence.

"Highwind."

"Here!" Cid shoved a fist into the air and glared a challenge at the teacher, which she ignored.

"Kisaragi."

"Yuffie Kisaragi of Wuti, here!" Yuffie waved a hand through the air.

"Lockhart."

"Here." Tifa raised a hand, the contempt in her eyes not showing in her voice.

"Strife."

"I'm here." He raised a hand, staring at the surface of his desk to avoid making eye-contact with the teacher.

"Tuesti."

"Here." Reeve raised a hand and nodded at the same time.

"Valentine."

"I am present." Vincent raised his left hand, then lowered it and hid the brass claws once again beneath the folds of his scarlet cape.

"Wallace."

"Here!" Barrett raised his hand, and slammed his fist on the table.

"Sephiroth."

"Right here." He raised a hand in acknowledgement.

Mrs. Randal put the role sheet on her desk, and then turned back to the class. "As to the basic rules of this classroom, they will most likely be familiar to you. They are rules created to preserve order in this class. Any exceptions will be specifically outlined." Mrs. Randal had a habit of not moving at all when she spoke, and making eye contact with every single student. It was unnerving. "Firstly, you are not to communicate verbally or otherwise with any other student while I am talking. Secondly, you are only to speak when you have been given express permission. Thirdly, you are to abide strictly by all school-wide rules, including but not limited to; the gum chewing ban, the restriction of use of electronic devices, and _dress codes_." Mrs. Randal had moved forward and was now standing by Yuffie's desk. "Miss Kisaragi, you are aware of your blatant violation of that last rule?"

Yuffie sighed, "Yep. I know! I'm not to wear shorts that come higher than my fingertips, I'm not to wear shirts that show my midriff, and headbands are classified as 'possible gang paraphernalia'." Yuffie smiled at the teacher. "But these are the only clothes I have at school, I've already gotten ten detention points for dressing like this and I've promised that I'll abide by the dress code tomorrow." Yuffie smiled as angelically as a flamboyant ninja can manage.

Mrs. Randal scowled. "I suppose I will have to be satisfied with that. However I will ask you to remove the headband."

Yuffie looked disappointed, but reached up and untied the headband she always wore.

Mrs. Randal turned to Tifa. "Lockhart?"

"I know," The fist fighter hung her head, "I'm convict of the same crimes. And I make the same promises. I'll abide by the dress code tomorrow."

Mrs. Randal was apparently on a roll and would probably continue to pick at the dress code issue until she had virtually put us in uniforms. "Mr. Valentine, please remove the headband the left glove and the… cape."

Vincent rested his chin on the back of his left hand, looked directly into the teacher's dull red eyes with his bright ones and made what was probably the boldest remark Mrs. Randal had heard in a long time:

"No."

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Notes: Ooohh, cliffhanger! Thanks to Severus Snape for Mrs. Randal's speech at the beginning of class. I don't want to get in trouble with deadlines, so I will make no promises as to new chapters.


	3. Day 1: Part 2

Day 1: Part 2

Disclaimer: I in no way claim to be Square Enix. Sorry if I gave that impression.

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Vincent smirked slightly. Mrs. Randal glowered.

"Let me rephrase myself," Vincent said, easily matching the teacher's eloquence, "On what grounds do you ask me to remove my headband glove and cape? What _circumstantial _evidence do you have that proves my affiliation with a gang? And on what grounds do you ask the removal of my glove and cape? They in no way violate the dress code no matter how… unique."

I was shocked and based on the faces of the rest of the class, so were they. Vincent Valentine had not only been so bold as to contradict someone like Mrs. Randal, but he had _monologued_ about it. It also looked like he might win.

Mrs. Randal looked as though uncharacteristically lost for words. She eventually rediscovered her voice. "Then the headband should be removed at least. Headbands are classified as—"

"Bandanas, actually. Bandannas are classified as gang paraphernalia," Vincent interrupted her, "not headbands."

Yuffie tied her own headband back on and gave Vincent a cheery thumbs-up behind Mrs. Randal's back.

Mrs. Randal looked like she was about to breathe fire. Vincent looked straight back at her, unafraid. If he wanted to, he really could breathe fire. The teacher turned stiffly and returned to the front of the classroom.

She cleared her throat as though to distract herself from what had just happened. "As your educator, I must find out what you have—or haven't—been taught with regards to the English language, and as such I have an assignment which _should _prove to be _review._" She retrieved a stack of papers from her desk.

"Brent!" I jumped at the sound of my name for the second time that class period. "Give these papers out."

I was handed a stack of printed white paper packets. I stood and put one on my desk, leaving it to give one to each of the others. No one looked at me except Yuffie who, as usual, smiled a bright greeting to me. Once I had returned to my own desk I looked down at the paper. Page one was list the parts of speech and define. There were twelve blanks. I had only been taught eight parts of speech. The second page asked us to do "basic" sentence diagramming. Several of the sentences involved semicolons and other complicated punctuation marks. The third page asked for an essay on the works of William Shakespeare and their modern relevance.

I glanced around; the entire class's heads were down trying to do what was asked of them, feeling as though Mrs. Randal's breath was on their necks. The room was silent until a very faint noise came from Reeve's backpack. Several people including myself looked around. The noise repeated itself and Reeve's backpack moved. Reeve nudged it with his foot and shushed it, but it was too late, the vulture had heard the noise and was coming to investigate.

Suddenly, a black tail with a white, slightly spiky end poked out of the backpack with a popping noise. It remained frozen for a second then started wiggling. Reeve nudged the backpack harder, this time achieving a sound effect.

"Tuesti!" Reeve jumped, then sat perfectly still, as though he thought she couldn't see him if he didn't move. He was wrong. "Tuesti, what is this?" She pointed to the backpack.

"Um… It's umm…" Reeve struggled for words.

"You are of course aware," Mrs. Randal hissed at him, "That bringing live animals to class is strictly prohibited at this school?"

Before Reeve could respond, there was a louder popping noise and Cait Sith's head and gloved front paws emerged from the backpack. The catlike creature looked up at the teacher. "Well, I'm no' an animal. In fact, I'm no' really even alive!" Cait Sith said in his distinctive accent, "Y'see I'm--" He never finished his sentence.

Mrs. Randal fainted, falling to her right to land directly behind Yuffie's desk. There was a pause, and then Yuffie screamed.

Several people panicked, Reeve was shoving Cait Sith back into his backpack.

"Is she… dead?" Yuffie asked paling.

Lucrecia stood and moved around Yuffie's desk, she bent down and checked the teacher's vital signs. "She's still breathing." There was a very faint edge of what could have been disappointment in her voice. "She's just been scared unconscious."

No one seemed to know what to do. Reeve was now holding Cait Sith by his scruff and yelling at him. Cid was swearing loudly, upset that the teacher was alive. Aerith and Tifa both looked panicky and about to follow the teacher into a dead faint. Cloud was asking if they could kill her and make it look like an accident. Sephiroth had approached the body so he could poke it with his boot.

Vincent was the only one behaving coherently. "Should we… call someone?" By the time I heard the question I was already picking up the phone and looking for the school nurse's phone number.

The phone rang, and then picked up. "Hello? Nurse Quail's office how may I help you?"

"Uh… this is room two hundred and sixty six…" People in the background were yelling and Sephiroth and Cloud were arguing loudly about how to kill Mrs. Randal.

"What is going on in there?" the nurse sounded scandalized.

"Yah, Mrs. Randal fainted…"

"Fainted?"

"Yah."

"What happened?"

"Well, she sort of, like, fell over and her eyes rolled into the back of her head all creepy-like. Ya know?"

"No, I mean, what made her faint." The nurse was getting impatient.

I tried to stall, Sephiroth was about to try to use a ballpoint pen to snap her spinal cord. "I dunno. She just sort of went over, ya know? Now she's just sort of, like, lying there… Ya know?"

The nurse sighed, angry and impatient. "I'm coming." She hung up.

I put the phone down. I loved being unhelpful in situations like this.

"The nurse is coming," I announced to the class. Cloud and Sephiroth looked disappointed; they had just agreed that Sephiroth would step on Mrs. Randal's throat until she died of asphyxiation.

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Note: Updating will be slower from now on. All this was written before the prologue was put up here...

And thank you, reviewers, you make this egotistical Leo happy!


	4. Day 1: Part 3

Day 1: Part 3

Disclaimer: Do I look like I own FFVII? Wait... you can't see me, can you?

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Several minutes later, the nurse arrived upon scenes of chaos. Yuffie had regained her bravery and was now poking Mrs. Randal jumping backwards about a foot each time the teacher stirred. Sephiroth and Cloud were being restrained by Lucrecia, Tifa and Aerith. Reeve, Cid and Barrett were talking in a corner of the room.

The nurse stared for a moment at the downed form of Mrs. Randal, then looked up at Vincent, who was standing near the teacher, looking at her, his head cocked slightly to one side. "What did you do?"

"I did nothing," Vincent assured her, sounding far from innocent.

The nurse rushed forward attempting to check if Mrs. Randal was still breathing. "She's alive," Lucrecia said turning for only half a second from lecturing a very bored looking Sephiroth, "I checked."

Nurse Quail gave Lucrecia a disapproving look and continued checking the teacher's mortem status. The nurse seemed satisfied. "I need someone to go get another teacher to help move Mrs. Randal to my office."

Sephiroth gave a mocking SOLDIER salute and fled the room, his silver hair trailing behind him.

"I am not done with you!" Lucrecia shouted after him. No one spoke for a moment after this statement.

"Woa… it got quiet all of the sudden…" Yuffie stating the obvious as usual. There were a few more moments in which no one said anything, then Sephiroth returned with the math teacher, Mr. Sato, in toe. "Hi, Mr. Sato!" Yuffie raised a hand and received a nod in response from the popular Japanese-born teacher

Nurse Quail sniffed in disapproval. "We need to move Agatha to my office immediately."

"Agatha?" Aerith asked, "is that her first name? Eww…"

Mr. Sato nodded to Nurse Quail and awkwardly picked up Mrs. Randal and left the classroom, followed by the nurse.

"Awkward silence…" Yuffie stated again.

Sephiroth broke the strained pause. "I've decided something," he announced, sitting at his desk and putting his boots on top of the grammar worksheet, "I hate this class."

"Here, here!"

"I'll back that one."

"Mrs. Randal is definitely not a nice teacher."

"She's M-E-A-N!" Yuffie stretched and sat on top of Reeve's desk facing Sephiroth. "And what's worse, I have this class right after Sato!"

"Sato is awesome!"

"Yah, he basically let us do whatever we wanted once we were finished."

"And he actually has a sense of humor."

"Yah…"

The discussion continued in this vein for a while. I watched, removed from the conversation, watching such colorfully outlandish characters speaking on such a mundane topic. I looked at Sephiroth and for a moment got the feeling that I was intruding on the conversations of gods.

"Anyway, what were you saying before?" Everyone was looking at me. "You said something about knowing us from somewhere?" Yuffie smiled encouragingly at me.

I swallowed. "The videogame… Final Fantasy Seven. You're all in it. But you're all… older in the game."

Cloud looked down. "Yah, I'm not entirely sure how we got to be here, or how we got like this." He looked around at the others. "Originally, we got really confused, and we tried to split up. But then we realized that fighting each other was useless."

"Yah," Sephiroth muttered behind Cloud's back, "'we' realized fighting was useless at about the time I was about to cut Cloudy's pretty little head off…"

Cloud continued as though there had been no interruption, "We decided we needed to stick together… and somehow we ended up here."

"'We're lost,'" Sephiroth whispered mockingly, "'we should see if there's anyone in _this_ building.'"

"Once we got here the… school officials…" Cloud said this contemptuously, "confiscated our things…"

"They took my shruken!" Yuffie complained.

Cloud nodded, "They took all our weapons…"

"My cigarettes." Cid growled.

Tifa looked at him, "It's a nasty habit, anyway." Cid sneered back.

"Red XIII was with us too, but they made him stay behind." Barrett seemed to be complaining for the sake of it.

Cloud shrugged. "So that's how we ended up here. We're just going to have to stay at this school until we can figure out a way to get back." There was silence for a moment.

I was the only one who noticed Sephiroth's darkened expression at these last words. The moment I looked at him, however, he cleared his face of the emotion.

He raised a hand slightly. "For the record, I remember nothing after setting foot in the Nebelheim reactor with Zack Fair. Everything past that point was Jenova's fault."

Cloud looked at Sephiroth, disbelieving.

"Honestly, you say I burned the city? How'd I do that, lighter fluid and a match, or a mastered Fire materia, which I didn't have?" Everyone had looked at Sephiroth now. "And anyway, why would I risk my life for something like that? So what if I'm some rejected experiment like you said I thought I was? I might mope for a while, then try to get revenge. But I'm not about to blow up the world and myself with it! The only reasonable explanation is alien interference."

There was silence as Sephiroth stared down the rest of the class, asking for a challenge. He received none and turned to walk away from the group.

"I guess I'll take that as an apology," Aerith shouted after him.

Sephiroth stiffened at this, but didn't look behind him.

"So…" Tifa said, looking around as though for a different topic, "What about this?" She picked up her copy of the packet, looking concerned.

"That's easy," I said, looking at Sephiroth's slightly dirty copy, "do what students have done since the invention of the internet…" I put a finger on the bottom of the worksheet where there was a URL for an answer key, "Cheat!"

The bell rang and we all jumped slightly, surprised by the noise.

"Time to go!" I swung my backpack over my shoulder and turned to leave. "See you all tomorrow, then!"

The rest of the class left behind me, talking amongst themselves, splitting up to go to their next classes…

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DAY 1 END

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Note: Woohoo. Look at me! I finished the first day of school!


	5. Day 2

Day 2

If Final Fantasy VII were mine... Dirge of Cerberus would be even more of an epic tragedy... but it's not, because I don't own FFVII

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I entered the classroom the next day, half suspecting that the whole thing had been a dream, but it wasn't. Barrett and Tifa were standing by Cloud's desk talking to him in hushed tones. The moment I entered the room they stopped talking. I had the eerie feeling that they had been talking about me. I sat down in my corner of the classroom as Yuffie burst in and broke the awkwardness.

"Hiya, everybody!" Yuffie waved brightly .

She had very drastically changed her attire. She was now wearing jeans which were too long for her and a long, loose, white shirt with a shallow V-neck. She was also wearing a brightly colored loose belt and long fingerless gloves. She had chosen a different headband. She caught me looking at her clothes and did a spin, showing off. "Like my new outfit?"

I smiled and nodded. "It's cool, I like it."

Yuffie sat down and put the bright fabric bag she was using as a backpack on her desk. "Tifa looks pretty cool too."

She was right, Tifa was dressed more simply than the ninja but still very prettily in a fitted white t-shirt and black shorts.

Sephiroth entered and I noticed that instead of wearing his coat awkwardly clasped as he had yesterday, he was wearing a black shirt to cover his normally bare chest.

The rest of the class filtered in, in varying states of dread and indolence.

Lucrecia took out the packet from the day before and started looking it over, biting her lip slightly.

"Put it away!" Yuffie whispered urgently leaning over her desk, "Lucrecia, put it away and Randal might forget about it!"

"I doubt she'll forget," Lucrecia said, but put the papers away anyway. Barely in time, too. The moment she had gotten the paper completely out of sight Mrs. Randal entered the room. Everyone was silent. Reeve looked intensely at his desk.

"I trust you all finished the assignment?" Her loathing was obvious in the laconic accusation, as was her wish to forget the events of the previous day.

We all got the papers out of whatever backpack or bag we had brought. I glanced around, and all the papers I saw were complete, the online cheating had probably worked.

I was assigned to collect the papers. I felt several sets of eyes burning into me as I handed the papers to Mrs. Randal. She looked down her nose at the papers, realizing grudgingly that the answers there were correct. She tore off the back page of each of the packets and had me return them to the class.

"I want you to revise these essays. You will bring an error-free, rewritten copy to class on Monday. Should it not meet my standards, it will be re-done."

We all started to reread the painful essay. I had ranted about modernization of Shakespeare's works. I drew a red line through a sentence about the Reduced Shakespeare Company.

Mrs. Randal sat at her desk and started typing at a computer which seemed far too technological for the classroom. The room had an old-fashioned blackboard and chalk at the front, but the entire right wall was the residence of a long table buried in technical equipment. A printer, a scanner, several things I couldn't name and a sound system rockers would kill for.

I was startled from my observations by something hitting me in the back of the head. It was a folded piece of paper and my name was written on it. I opened the note, it was in a hand I had never seen.

_"Nicole, how do you 'know' us? Really, we need to know. If you're the one who made us come here, we need to find out how to get back.__ –__Tifa__"_

I glanced up at her then looked away, unnerved. Her red eyes were looking at me so hard, I felt like she was trying to see through my flesh and into my soul.

I quickly scribbled a reply.

_"As I said before, I know you guys from the compilation of Final Fantasy VII. I have no clue as to how you got here. I do not believe I am responsible for your transportation here, however I will do everything in my power to facilitate your return._

_"You probably shouldn't use your real name on notes like this. It's easy to get caught. –Nix"_

I tossed the note behind me and Cid snarled as it hit him in the face. I heard the note being tossed to Yuffie, then Tifa. I continued editing.

For the next ten minutes there was complete silence. The note hit me in the back of the head again.

_"__I want to talk__ to you__ after class.—T.L.__"_

_"__Quit throwing damn papers at me!—Captain H.__"_

I smirked at the comment which was obviously Cid's and wrote my reply.

_"__Okay, I'll talk to you outside the classroom. Poor __nicotine deprived Captain… —Nix"_

I tossed the note back, knowing it would hit Cid and aggravate him further.

I had no idea what to expect after class. I returned to editing. The room was deathly quiet. We waited for the ending bell. I watched the clock.

Ten minutes until the end of class…

Five minutes…

Three minutes…

One minute…

The bell rang.

I shoved the red pen adorned essay into my bag and started to leave. "I want a typed, finished draft of that essay on Monday!" Several sighs, some groans and muttering.

I left the room and, once outside, looked around. Tifa, Barrett and Cloud were waiting for me, so I approached.

"Tell the truth," Cloud snapped abruptly, "are you involved in us getting here?"

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but I was rescued.

"Cloud, drop it. She's not involved," Aerith said walking up next to me, "It is strange that she knows the game and… but that's no reason to get all huffy about everything."

I looked from Aerith's hopeful smile to Cloud's stony expression.

"Trust me Cloud, she's not involved in this."

Cloud looked down, slightly ashamed. The subject seemed to drop. I walked to my next class feeling slightly awkward, knowing Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, and Aeris were watching me.

----

I meant to update earlier... I was working on a research project on animal experimentation... Everything is Hojo's fault.

This is not my favorite chapter, but whatever.


	6. Day 3

Day 3

I do not own or claim to own any of the following: FFVII, Pirates of the Caribbean, manga, Kingdom Hearts, Twilight, Dracula, Frankenstein, a Gackt video, or Gackt himself. I also do not want to think about that last one…

---

Although I had the weekend to do it, my essay turned out to be of less value to the human race than a six second Gackt fan-video on YouTube.

I had completely re-written it so that it was as sardonically tongue-in-cheek as I could manage. I sat down in my place at the fore of the room. The school day had begun to feel strangely routine.

"Okay, who else _didn't _do their essay!?" Yuffie asked raising her hand. Cloud raised a hand sheepishly, and Sephiroth gave a so-so sign in the air.

"I didn't know the hell y'all wuz talking about yesterday about Shakespeare!" Barrett complained.

Everyone else started chiming in and continuing what had obviously been a long debate about Shakespeare's works.

The teacher's office door opened. The room was suddenly as silent as a graveyard. "Please take out your papers." There was a rustle as everyone who had completed the assignment got it out. "Brent, collect them."

I quickly grabbed the papers and handed them to the teacher. Mrs. Randal glanced through the papers with an air of superiority. "I will grade these essays. In the mean time, you are to read."

There was silence in the room. "Uh… I don't have anything to read," Cloud said sheepishly.

"Neither do I…" Aerith said, smiling warily.

"I don't even have a book." I chimed in, starting a wave of muttered agreement.

Randal glowered like a serpent at a mouse. "You do not have anything to read… It is a requirement in my English class that all students should carry with them a novel which they will read in their spare time. Considering this class's apparent deficiency in that area of preparedness, I will permit you to find a novel in the school library. You will all have proper books by tomorrow."

She had me hand out a list of books which she did not want us to read in her class.

"Unfortunately, I am not permitted to 'ban' books at this school, however I believe that the books on this list are inappropriate for this class, and should thus not be brought."

We walked down towards the library, talking amongst ourselves.

"Can you believe this witch of a teacher?" Yuffie said to me, "Banning books… and she even said that she can't do that!"

I looked at the list on the page. "Well, these books aren't technically banned. They are just suggested against." I smiled at Yuffie. "Think of them more as… guidelines."

Once in the library I began to idly glance the shelves as I normally did. I pulled down and opened a well-loved copy of the manga Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories Volume 1. Some of the jokes would never get old.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Randal noticed. "Brent, graphic novels will not be appropriate."

I regretfully put the book back, giving an apologetic look to the limited selection of manga in the library.

As I reread the "banned" books list for a fourth time, and noticed something extremely odd. "It makes sense now…" I whispered in amazement.

"What makes sense?" Lucrecia asked looking at the list over my shoulder. Vincent was tagging idly behind her, possibly for lack of anything better to do.

I circled one of the novels on the list, _Dracula_, by Bram Stoker. I looked up, grinning like a demon. "Mrs. Randal has a mortal fear… of the undead," I whispered dramatically.

Lucrecia raised an eyebrow at me. "A fear of the undead? What makes you think that?" Vincent looked awkward.

"It makes sense," I argued, "She hates anything that is alive and shouldn't be. Look," I traced my finger over the booklist, "_Dracula _is banned. Vampires, creatures who die only to rise again. _Frankenstein_ is banned. Theories about return from the dead. And remember her reaction to Cait Sith saying he wasn't 'really' alive?"

"Very sketchy evidence," Lucrecia said, cynically. Vincent looked like if there were a hole he would jump into it.

"It's a theory," I replied, "And it's worth a try." I looked at Vincent who took a possibly involuntary step backwards.

Lucrecia looked at me suspiciously. "What are you planning?"

"Class ends in fifteen minutes. Find a reading novel if you do not have one yet." Mrs. Randal announced, far too loudly for the library.

"First," I said, conspiratorially, "we prove my theory." I looked at Vincent and Lucrecia. "Will you help me?"

Lucrecia looked at Vincent, who shrugged half heartedly, still looking like he wished there were an emergency staircase. Lucrecia sighed. "What do you want us to do?"

I smiled slightly triumphantly. "Look for a book, any book which relatively obviously has to do with resurrection, Vampires—anything like that." I started toward my old haunt in the fiction side of the library, "And get everyone else to find books like that too. Bring them to class tomorrow."

Lucrecia nodded.

By the time I had found the school's copy of Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ Lucrecia was flicking through books in the non-fiction section, Vincent was quietly telling Cloud and Reeve the plan and Aerith was checking out a copy of _Twilight_.

_The plan was working. _I smiled at the book in my hands. _Give my creation life!_

---

Note: ...Short chapter. Even for me. Heh, they're easier to write... The chapters will get longer later, I promise.


	7. Day 4

Day 4

Disclaimer: Don't own FFVII or any of the books the class is reading. Or Loveless. Or the concept of ninjas. But I do have a mastered blizzard materia which shall be used to put out any flames of revenge.

---

It was Tuesday morning and I surprised myself by being eager to get to school, not just to see my friends but to go to the class which was decidedly my least favorite. I came downstairs to find my mom looking through my backpack. "You're reading Dracula again?"

"Yes. You got a problem with that?" I retorted amiably, snatching the book and brushing my hair at the same time. "It is for an experiment."

"Ooooh, an experiment?" she said, obviously mocking my Jenova-Project-induced phobia of human experimentation.

"Yes, an experiment. On my English teacher." I grinned at my mother's perplexed and worried expression as I stepped out the door and walked the short distance to the school.

---

I walked into class just slightly late. "Hiya, Nicole!" Yuffie chirped, "You're the one who came up with this, right?"

I smiled, noticing that she was brandishing a copy of _Bunnicula_. "Yah, I came up with it, did everyone get books?" There were general nods and murmurs from most of the class. "Good. Now don't let Randal see them until she tells us to read. It'll be more of a shock if it's all at once. "

All but one person put away their Vampire books. I walked around her desk and looked at the cover of the book. Lucrecia made a face at me and put the book in her lap so I couldn't see it.

Unfortunately I had already seen the title. "Realistic Theories behind Marie Shelley's 'Frankenstein'?"

"Yes, so?"

I shook my head and sat down. She was two-thirds finished with the book already. "Just don't let Randal see it first, or you're dead…"

Lucrecia put the book away once again. And only moments before the teacher entered with her usual flourish.

Randal strode to her desk and took from it a stack of papers. This time I wasn't recruited for pass-out duty.

"Brent!"

But I swear, this teacher loves to bark my name.

"Your paper was far too one-tracked. Vary your topics." She put the paper on my desk in a scathing gesture.

"Crescent." The teacher glared at Lucrecia, apparently angry about not having anything to bluntly criticize.

"Gainsborough, you hadn't the faintest clue what you were talking about, did you?"

Aerith looked ashamed.

"Highwind." Cid glared, as though daring her to insult him. "I am not familiar with the play 'Loveless'." Cid turned a slightly reddish hue.

"Kisaragi…"

The teacher continued to dish criticism to the entire class. Her cutting words made each member of the class, no matter how little they cared, feel like they had disgraced themselves. What she had said to me did not bother me, mostly because I had been bullied by these types throughout my entire school life. What made me angry was how much this teacher had hurt the characters whom I feared and respected so much. The look of self disgrace Sephiroth had. Yuffie nearly starting to cry.

Any of the cheery excitement I had at the beginning of the period was gone, replaced with a desire for revenge.

My theory on the teacher's phobia of the undead had changed in my mind from an innocent prank, to a devious plot.

"This assignment will be due at the beginning of the period tomorrow."

I ended up passing it out.

"After you complete the assignment you are to read the novel you got yesterday."

I resisted glancing around to see the reactions of the rest of the class. I started the assignment. It was a review of sentence diagramming, most of which we had, of course, never even seen. The energy in the room was strangely tense; everyone hoped that someone would be able to finish, to make the Randal angry.

I had nearly finished the double-sided worksheet, I was the only one who was likely to have had recent experience with this content.

The bell rang. I wasn't the only one disappointed, based on the looks on the faces of the people behind me.

The moment we got out of the classroom everyone started talking, most were angry that the assignment had taken so long. Yuffie was still heartbroken about having her essay failed due to vague references to the secret ways of the Ninja.

"Lucrecia!" She looked up from her book and Vincent used this as an opportunity to nonchalantly reach around her and take the book. "Don't finish that before tomorrow, okay?"

Lucrecia snatched the book back from Vincent. "Nicole, I don't think this is such a good idea… I mean, going against Mrs. Randal is suicide."

I looked at her in mild sarcastic amazement.

"What?"

"You, of all people, lecturing about suicide."

She made a "Hmph" noise and walked away, ignoring me.

I shook my head and went to my next class, smiling, but still internally fuming about the fact that my revenge had been delayed…

---

Author's Note: My apologies that this is later than I inteanded, also an apology that I am using suspense as a weapon against you.


	8. Day 5

Day 5

Disclaimer:… I'm too tired to write a clever disclaimer. So basically, I own nothing in this chapter, and I don't own the excuse "I'm too tired".

---

Wednesday, most boring day of the week in my opinion. But luckily, my life would never be boring again thanks to my fourth class.

Apparently, we weren't collecting the sentence diagramming. We were starting yet another worksheet. A harder one. We had never seen the majority of the content, and there were even some vocabulary that I had never even heard of. The worksheet didn't explain anything. I sighed, this was going to be a very boring class period as far as I knew. I looked around and noticed several people staring off into space. Yuffie had her head on her desk and based on her even breathing, she was asleep.

Randal, who had been typing on her ultra- high-tech computer, stood up suddenly. I looked up at the sound, then back down at the worksheet, not focusing anymore. Randal walked to the door and put her had on the handle, not looking back at us. "Highwind, you are in charge." Randal left the room. Randal left the room.

The moment the door closed Yuffie sat up, casting off her feigned sleep. "Waitaminute, Waitaminute! Randal just_ left_? And she left _Cid _in charge? Are you _kidding_?!"

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" Cid snapped, glaring at her.

"Yeesh, Cid. Ya don't have to go and bite my head off!" They glared at each other.

"Is this even legal?" Tifa asked thoughtfully.

Sephiroth looked up, confused and guilty. "Is what legal?"

Tifa ignored him. "Is it legal for her to leave the classroom? Some other teachers were saying it wasn't…"

I shrugged, "Eh, some teachers send students on errands, some don't trust us to bring decaf coffee."

"So all she's doing is going to get coffee?" Aerith asked.

"Most likely. Either that or something equally trivial…"

"We should take advantage of this," Sephiroth said, a glint of rebellion in his eye, "like, you know, blow something up…"

Everyone looked at Sephiroth in silence.

"Or… maybe not…"

"Well, maybe not _blow something up, _but we should definitely pull something cool…" Yuffie began to ponder a good prank.

Lucrecia, however, looked worried. "I don't think we should do anything. I mean, if we get caught or—"

"Hey, I'm in charge here!" Cid shouted, "and I say, we blow some crap up."

"No!" Lucrecia seemed to be trying to control the class.

I tried to brush her anger off jokingly. "Teacher's pet…"

She glared at me and I recognized Sephiroth's eyes, not as bright, but just as harsh. "Hack," she whispered, more cuttingly than Randal.

I sat up straighter in mild shock. "How did you know?"

Silence.

"Novel check." The entire class froze. Randal had entered through a back door and the class, distracted by the argument, hadn't noticed. "Novel check. You were required to have a novel with you at all times. Get it out." Randal put her coffee on her desk and glared at us. "Now."

There was another half a moment of stunned silence, then we realized what she meant.

Almost simultaneously, we got out the vampire books. I had only half a second to glance around, but noticed that along with Yuffie's _Bunnicula_, Tifa had _In the Forest of the Night_ and Aerith had apparently finished _Twilight_ and was reading _New Moon._ Lucrecia, however, had a completely different book. I didn't take the time to see what it was, just the fact that what was the most powerful weapon before, was gone.

_How can she do that? The little—_I cut off the voice in my head before it said anything mean, because I didn't want to hear it. I respected Lucrecia, even though at the moment she was being a pain in the—

"_What _are you reading?" I jumped a little, forcibly wakened from my thoughts by Randal's voice.

I looked at the book in my hand. "Dunno, what's it look like I'm reading?" I held up the book which had the words "_Dracula_ by Bram Stoker" printed in fancy red letters on the front.

Randal glared down at me, then up at the rest of the class all holding obvious Vampire books. Lucrecia was pretending to read. "I can see clearly that this was somehow organized," she hissed, "But if I see any books like these in my classroom again, I will make you all _regret it._"

There was a pause in which Mrs. Randal's eyes swept the room for a challenge. I waited.

Mrs. Randal had turned away before I posed my question, "What do you have against Vampire books anyway?"

She turned around again, completing a full circle which would have been silly looking if Randal weren't so scary. "What did you just say?"

"I said," I repeated, louder now, "'What do you have against Vampire books?'"

Mrs. Randal looked over my head, speaking strangely, as though reasoning more with herself than with me. "Novels of... _this theme_ are… illogical… and completely unreasonable. When something is dead it does not reanimate. No exceptions, malignant or benign. No exceptions, ever." She turned away again and sat at her desk, looking only vaguely shaken, and if possible paler than usual.

The rest of the class period passed in absolute silence. I was told weeks later that Lucrecia had refused to speak again until the next day.

---

Author Note!: Sorry I posted this chapter so much later than I meant to… heh, heh… Anyway, I have been asked if other characters will be appearing, and unfortunately, due to the fact that this story actually (shockingly) has a little bit of rhyme and reason, no. There is a very specific way that the characters got here. Can't say more here, so sit tight and keep reading, okay?


	9. Day 6

Day 6

* * *

All things belong to Square Enix. Square Enix is the home of gods. Worship Square Enix.

* * *

"So happy its Thursday!" I said with sarcastic brightness.

Sephiroth gave the sort of darkly sarcastic look that made him famous. "Why?"

"Oh, come on. You haven't heard that one? It's like TGIF…" I smiled, sitting down.

Yuffie seemed to get it as she had broken into a fit of silent laughter. A few other people smiled slightly and others had sarcastic looks like they thought it was a stupid or immature joke. Most people smirked though.

Randal entered the classroom as usual and ordered us to get out the worksheets from the past two days. Some people had assumed that there would be another worksheet and that the previously assigned ones would be due Monday. Those people didn't have them finished.

The Randal was, predictably, furious. We corrected the packet verbally, we were more confused afterwards than before.

She assigned two new double sided worksheets due Monday. Randal was, by far, the most un-predictable teacher I had ever had.

Randal left again. This time, Aerith was in charge.

"Okay, no being mean, no fighting, no blowing things up and…"

"Don't step on the flowers?" I suggested.

She giggled. "That too."

"So, basically," Sephiroth concluded, "be good and don't do anything interesting."

"That's _not_ what I said."

They started bickering.

"Uh… Nicole?"

I looked up, surprised. Lucrecia looked as though she was steeling herself to say something. "I think… I think you might be right… I mean Mrs. Randal is wrong… She… I think she's being unreasonable, so…"

An awkward silence fell as Randal entered the room. Cloud had just said something to Sephiroth that had a completely unintentional suggestive connotation. Randal had heard it.

"Continue working. Now."

Three more minutes of lull. Lucrecia raised a hand timidly, and surprisingly Randal gave her permission to speak.

"This is not precisely linked to the topic at hand, but I would like to know nonetheless… What makes you so sure that a supernatural phenomena culminating in the reanimation of the deceased is impossible?"

The sentence went over many people's heads.

Randal stiffened, a nerve had been touched. "Why don't you tell me?" she snarled. "All of you," she was now addressing the entire class, "An essay on the reasons that theories of resurrection are unreasonable even in literature. Three pages, typewritten." There was absolute silence. "Now!"

Everyone looked in their bags, as we didn't dare ask each other for paper today.

"This essay will be due on Monday along with the sentence diagramming worksheets."

I looked around the room where most people were staring around, clueless. Yuffie was doodling. Sephiroth had a rubber band and was trying to make a slingshot. Reeve was watching his attempt with a critical eye. Only Lucrecia was writing. I couldn't see the look on her face because her hair had obscured it...

I turned to my own paper and scrawled a title for the essay.

The Circle of Life

* * *

I jumped as the bell rang. I got up and left the room, watching everyone around me closely.

So stupid. I was so disorganized that I almost surprised myself by remembering. There was a book I had to get out of my science classroom at the front of the school. I had forgotten this morning, but remembered in my last class of the day. So there I was, heading toward the throng of people at the front of the school instead of slipping quietly home out the back as I would have much preferred.

When I entered the classroom, the first thing I noticed was a gigantic rainbow-colored drawing of a shruken on the whiteboard. The science teacher caught me staring at it. "That was Yuffie." She said, looking for the book on the cluttered shelves. "Is she in any of your classes?"

"What, Yuffie? Yah, she's in my English class with Randal."

My science teacher gave me a mildly pitying look and took on a conspiratorial voice. "I hope you two give her _heck._"

I smiled, pulling the book of the shelf myself and putting the book in my backpack. "Don't worry about that, worry how much hell we're gonna _get _for it..."

They would not have looked out of place at the front of the school, but they were walking off campus instead of in the direction of the buses. Admittedly, not normal behavior. I walked home from school in the same direction. I ran to catch up with them. Yuffie was the first one to notice me.

"What are you doing here?" we asked each other simultaneously. Some of the other people looked up from their conversations to watch me. Aerith actually smiled.

"I walk home from school. I live around here," I clarified, "Where do you guys even live?"

"We're right--"

"We can't tell you." Sephiroth said authoritatively. He glanced at the rest of the group. "We don't know if we can trust you."

I was astounded. Most people seemed to agree with Sephiroth though.

"Oh, my gawd," I said sarcastically, "Cloud actually agrees with Sephiroth."

I followed the group part of the way home, ignoring suspicious glances and talking to a highly animated Yuffie. They turned down a road I wasn't familiar with and I continued towards my own home. _You're wrong,_ I thought at Sephiroth as he gave a last mistrustful stare, _you can trust me. I'll respect that you don't want me to come snooping. I won't come anywhere near that road… Until you trust me. _

Although I had promised myself this and had sworn it by Sephiroth's hair, I was still curious. Curiosity kills even the most well-intended of cats…

* * *

Note: THEY TOOK MY DASHES!! FIST TILDIES NOW DASHES?!

Sane note: I am so sorry that this is so late... It's because of the report on Animal Experimentation... Ergo, Hojo's fault... I promise I'll post again as soon as the devil's little servant permits... 

(Over a thousand hits on all chapters! -heart attack- That's a good thing, you are all awesome.)

Ω


	10. Day 7

Day 7

Disclaimer: As usual, don't own anything... Don't even own my own soul...

* * *

"You have to be kidding. You're _not_ turning this in." I looked up incredulously at her.

"She spent four solid hours on that thing!" Reeve shouted.

"I can tell..." I continued skimming the essay. "It's really good... and makes sense. Not too specific, but not so generic that it seems all hypothetical..."

"She's scary, seriously," Reeve said, looking unnerved. I ignored him.

I finished reading the essay and handed it back to Lucrecia. "You have to be joking. You can't turn that in and live…"

"If this is what I have to do…"

"So are you going to help?"

She took a moment to respond, thinking. "I would not support what you are doing under… _normal _circumstances, but considering…" She paused again. "I'll help you, but only within reason."

I shook my head.

"What?"

"You still believe in 'normal?' Of all people…" She had walked into it, but that doesn't mean I didn't deserve the glare.

Randal entered the room finding people out of their seats for the third day in a row. Sephiroth, Reeve and I got ten detention points each. I was not happy about that.

"Ten points on strike one? Do I get a warning or something?"

"You have had multiple warnings."

"But why jump to ten points? That is an unheard of singular quantity!"

"We got about twenty each when we walked in the school..." Sephiroth muttered.

"That's 'cuze you walked in with a katana, Sephiroth."

A few people laughed, Randal glared them into instant silence. "This is not your decision, Brent," Randal snapped, "If you talk back to me like that again, I'll make it fifteen."

I was silent because I didn't trust myself to open my mouth. I sat back down, sulkily.

I was angry, I was supposed to be working on the essay, but I wasn't doing as told today. I doodled.

* * *

By the end of class I had done chibis of several of my classmates, including Lucrecia surrounded by books and papers, and Aerith holding a copy of Twilight. I was amusing myself with a little Cait Sith when a note fell onto my desk.

"_Lucrecia, I don't think you should do this. Really, you've already been in more trouble than you deserve. Don't make things worse for yourself if you don't have to. –Vincent_"

"_Vincent is right. Remember what happened to me concerning Cait Sith? Don't get yourself killed. –Reeve_"

"_DON'T KILL YOURSELF! Let one of us do it! Make Vincent do it!! –Yuffie_"

"_I agree with Yuffie, don't make yourself a martyr for nothing. You've got a clean reputation compared with the rest of us. –Captain Cid_"

I shook my head, smiling, and began my own additions to the note.

"_I think your essay is a wonderful idea, actually. You might want to soften the tone, but… I'll take credit for the whole plan if you get into trouble. –Nix_"

I tossed the note onto Lucrecia's desk. She looked up in surprise from editing her essay. She read the note, jotted something on it, then tossed it back to me surprisingly deftly for someone so studious.

"_I'm taking Nix's advice. Thank you all for caring, though. I think I know what I'm doing. Love you, Vincent. –Lucrecia_"

I tossed the note back to Cid so that everyone who had written on the note could read her response. I returned to my doodles. By the end of the class, the page was covered. And my favorite was a Chibi Lucrecia hugging Chibi Vincent with vampire fangs.

* * *

Author Note: No updates for over a month? Blame Hojo... and my for real English teacher... I do bite my thumb at you!

Next chapter will be longer, but will not take as long to write. Does that make sense? I don't think so...

I enabled anonymous reviews, so I had better get some from my friends! -Pouts-

Ω


	11. Day 8

Day 8

Disclaimer: I don't own a thing, and couldn't write an eight page essay on vampires.

* * *

I slammed the clock's snooze alarm a little too hard and ended up breaking it. I subsequently, managed to twist my ankle and stub my toe simultaneously while getting breakfast. Finding out my near-fail grade on a test in my third period class only solidified the foul mood.

Monday.

I hate Mondays.

I wish Monday would die.

"Man, I think I could write an essay on how much I hate Mondays!" I said, slamming _The Circle of Life_ on my desk. "It'd be easier than this thing! Four pages and apparently I'm a—quote Alice—'an overachieving nerd'!" I shook my head. "How many pages did you end up with, then?"

"Eight."

"Wow, only eight?"

"I cut it down a bit... softened the tone like you suggested..." She shrugged.

Randal entered and, in her usual style, banished side-conversations wordlessly.

"Brent. Collect the essays." I smirked as I traversed the room, collecting the essays. Several people had followed a very tricky cheat I had suggested for page length essays in which you increase the margins so that you have to write less.

I gave Randal my most suspiciously innocent smile as I handed her the essays.  
Randal's eyes bored into me like red blades of metal, but I smiled and shrugged it off, returning to my seat.  
Randal put the papers on her desk to be corrected later. For now, we were correcting the sentence diagramming worksheets.

Fifteen minutes of confusion later and I actually had a faint clue what we were doing regarding sentence diagramming. However, I can't speak for everyone else.

Randal said that she would be grading the fated essays and that we were to complete another—the last—sentence diagramming worksheet. The test would be Thursday and nobody was exactly confident that they knew what they were doing.

Fifteen minutes later, Randal had read and graded three papers, mine, Cloud's and Vincent's. She seemed to be becoming more and more disgusted as she each essay she read. Part way through reading Sephiroth's she put it face down on her desk and stood stiffly, obviously fed up.

"Crescent is in charge." The door closed.

"Niiiice, apparently she hasn't seen your essay yet!" I said, laughing. "So, have you any rules for us?"

She thought for a moment, looking around, her eyes resting on Sephiroth who, oblivious to the gaze, was drawing a cartoon on his desk in pen.

"Don't kill yourselves, each other or me." A couple of people laughed, "Other than that... No drawing on the desks."

Sephiroth jumped guiltily.

I took this to heart and sat on my desk. Several other people were similarly rule breaking, traversing the classroom to talk to other people.

"Someone should watch the door in case Randal…"

"I'm on it," Reeve replied, already opening his backpack and releasing Cait Sith upon the unfortunate world.

Cait walked up to the door, put his feline ear to it and listened. He gave Reeve a thumbs up, probably meaning that he could hear all the goings-on in the corridor.

"Thoughts on question 4 anyone?" Cloud asked, tentatively confused.

"Adjective," I said, without hesitation. I had just finished that part of the packet.

"Question 5?"

I looked at him with my best—yet still lame—imitation of Sephiroth's glower. "I dunno, Cloudy, what'd you think?" He looked at the paper, clueless. "Work it out." I wasn't going to give him all the answers.

I got out my cheap, 1 GB MP3 player and put on a playlist of some of my favorite songs. Sephiroth came up to my desk in a way that told me he wanted something from me.

"Hey, Nicole? Could you possibly with your amazingly superior intellect, please help with number twelve?"

I re-read the problem he was talking about. "Read it aloud. Trust me, it works."

Sephiroth glared at me and stalked back to his desk.

"Lookout, she's coming!" Cait Sith was plunking at top speed towards Reeve's backpack. There was a mad scramble back to seats, but everyone was back and mock-working by the time the door opened.

Randal looked around at us suspiciously, then looked at Lucrecia who smiled, then nodded once. The innocent image was impossible to mistrust.

The class plowed determinedly onward. Cid's and Yuffie's essays were corrected. Randal picked up Lucrecia's. Everyone who was paying attention, (me, Vincent and Lucrecia) tensed slightly.

Randal's reading speed began to slow, then stopped altogether. She returned to the beginning of the essay and re-read the first paragraph. She brought the paper closer to her face then farther away as though trying to focus her eyes.

A long, blank, pause.

"Crescent." The whole class was suddenly more attentive than they ever had been when Randal was speaking. "Crescent, this… You did not write on… the appropriate topic…"

Lucrecia was looking at her desk. Ashamed? Regretting her actions? "I wrote that essay because that is what I know is true." Her voice was quiet. I did not think that I was the only one who was trying very hard not to look at Vincent. "I don't think that the concept of vampires itself is… logically or commonly possible… But life as a tangible force, under the right circumstance can be relatively dependably restored."

Anger would not quite cover Randal's apparent feelings on the issue she had an expression like a blank page.

The silence was truly deafening, I could almost smell thunder in the air. In that moment, Lucrecia was braver than I could ever have been.

"Why are you so afraid?" Silence again. No one moved. Lucrecia respectfully broke eye contact first, looking down at her desk.

"No one speaks. Continue working and when you've finished that, read your _damned_ books."

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. From looking around at the rest of the class, some of them obviously got the joke I had as well. Even Vincent was looking at the teacher with a mixture of amusement and concern.

Randal staggered back to her desk back to her desk using it as support.

We mostly followed orders, finishing the assignment, then doing whatever we wanted silently, reading, drawing, passing notes...

Just before class ended, Randal seemed to regain herself and began the rant on Lucrecia that we all knew was inevitable.

"I don't know what to say to you."

_No, really?_ I thought sarcastically.

"But I do not want to hear of you talking back to anyone in this way again." The teacher looked around fiercely. "Any of you! Understand?"

The bell rang ending class and we all left hurriedly.

Lucrecia was leaning her head on Vincent's shoulder quietly when I caught up with them in the hallway. She looked very troubled.

"What's up?"

She leaned into him even more, seeking comfort, until he had to put an arm around her to make sure she kept her balance. "I'm not sure what I did was right…" He hugged her tighter for a moment and she smiled sadly up at him in acknowledgement.

"It's eat or be eaten with this teacher. We can't afford to let her think she can walk all over us. And I think you needed to win against someone like that for once."

"So… you're going to try to break Randal?"

"Yup. It's her or us."

She smiled slightly. "You did the books, then I wrote an essay. It's your turn."

"'Lright… As long as you can get Vincent to help."

"WHAT?" He looked at Lucrecia, confused and slightly wary.

We both laughed, both understanding the plan. I veered onto a different direction, going to my next class and ready to plan the next attack.

* * *

Note for today: My sincerest apologies, dear Alice, there was a change of plans and your debut has been postponed...

Ω


	12. Day 9

Day 9

Disclaimer:All this time and I _still_ don't own Final Fantasy? Tch.

* * *

"They took our table." Morgan looked solemnly at the young students who were sitting at the lunch table where we normally sat.

"Um… yah, they did." I looked at the table too. "So, uh… what now?"

"Now we go commandeer one!" Alice put a fist in the air, grinning manically.

I imitated her. "Huzzah! Off to commandeer a table!"

* * *

There were no open tables, or tables with only a few people sitting at them. Evidently, a lower grade had been unceremoniously dumped into our lunch hour. The nerve.

In a corner of my eye I saw a familiar shade of silver.

"Hey! Let's see if we can sit with the people from my English class!" I approached the area where the group of students I knew so well from Randal Torture Hour had taken over three tables. At the one I was approaching sat Aerith, Yuffie, Reeve, Cid, Sephiroth, Vincent and Lucrecia.

"We seek sanctuary from the bitter cold! …and the lower grade kids."

Aerith giggled. "You can sit here, but be warned that some of us here aren't the best company…" Cid and Sephiroth both looked up, full glare in place, as though to accentuate the point.

"I think we'll live for the day, right?" I looked around hopefully.

Morgan nodded. "We'll survive unless they decide to poison us."

There was a slightly awkward pause. I sat down and the others followed suit. Reeve and Cid had resumed their hushed conversation.

"Are you going to introduce everybody, Nicole?" Yuffie asked teasingly.

I smiled sheepishly and named everyone at the table to the others.

Morgan had meanwhile begun systematically disemboweling her lunch and Alice had finished hers and was looking at the empty plastic bag sadly.

"Hey, Nicole, do you have any more goldfish?"

"No. You ate them all."

"Dang." She grinned at Morgan instead now and opened her mouth.

"No. The crackers are mine until I'm done with them."

Alice looked disheartened, but resumed her quest to mooch food off of the members of the table. "Hey… Vincent?"

Vincent gave her a withering look. "I don't have any food, so don't even ask."

She gave him a puppy-eyed look anyway. Vincent edged his chair away from her a few centimeters. I watched in amusement as Alice tried to hold a conversation with Vincent, giggling flirtatiously.

Lucrecia's expression was growing darker with each word Alice spoke, so I tried to prevent a catfight by way of distraction. I tapped Lucrecia on the shoulder and conspiratorially whispered details of my plan to her. "Do you think he'd agree to it?"

"I'll ask him..."

Vincent had been doing his best to both shun Alice and pay attention to our conversation. "Are you girls going to make my life hell in some way?"

"Ever the perceptive," Lucrecia teased, "but only for a little while." She leaned to convey the plan to him in turn. "So will you please let us do that? We won't have to do much…"

He sighed. "Fine."

"Arigato, Vincent!" I said happily.

"Wait, wait! What're you talking about?" Alice interrupted.

"Never you mind, 'Lis."

She pouted. "Why won't you tell me? Pleeeese Nixi?"

"It's for English." I retorted.

"Randal? Is something going to blow up?" Morgan asked, interested.

Everyone was looking either alarmed, or disbelievingly suspicious depending on their character.

"…That wasn't the plan. Good idea though."

"Nix won't tell me what she's planning!" Alice shot a dirty look at me, and then gave Vincent the puppy look again, "Will you tell me, Vince?"

He glared at her. "No." Vincent grabbed Lucrecia's hand and left the table sulkily.

"What's with him?" Yuffie wondered aloud.

"Uh…" I glanced at Alice, then to Morgan. Before I had to make some awkward explanation Sephiroth sat in the newly vacated seat next to me. "Hey, Nix… That's your nickname, right, Nix?" Sephiroth was smiling in a way I had never seen Sephiroth smile.

"… What do you want?" I asked pointedly.

Sephiroth's expression fell back into its usual seriousness. The arm that I hadn't noticed was around the back of my chair also withdrew. "Alright, I had a plan…" He stopped, noticing my friends listening. "Uh… I'll tell you during English, okay?"

"Right."

He left the table, glancing at my friends, suspicious.

I shook my head and laughed softly.

* * *

Outside the classroom, I was ambushed.

"Who was that?" Lucrecia demanded, rounding on me.

"Who was who?" I asked, confused by the sudden violent mood.

"The one of your friends who… with Vincent…"

"Oh, yah. That was Alice."

"Alice." Lucrecia repeated, obviously building a deep grudge. "If I ever see her acting like that again, I—"

"Yea, Lucrecia, I'm sure you're gonna totally kick her butt. I think class has almost started and I don't want either of us to be late."

* * *

"After reviewing the scores on your last homework assignments, I have concluded that this class cannot progress further without more study."

Most of the class stared blankly. My mind said, "Oh, snap."

"We will be continuing our work with sentence diagramming, however we will be reading a novel as planned."

Lucrecia glanced at me. "Planned?" she mouthed.

"During the course of the next week we will be reading and analyzing _To Kill a Mockingbird_--"

"Wait up, there! You're joking, a week? For a whole big, scary book?!"

Randal's eyes narrowed. A lecture was imminent. Instead of listening, I looked behind me at the rest of the distraught class. The only person who seemed unconcerned was Sephiroth, who was writing something.

We had to read the first three chapters, answer eighteen analysis questions and define 60 vocabulary words by tomorrow. Not to mention studying for a parts of speech test that would be coming up.

Part way into our work time a note landed on my desk from the right. It was hastily scotch-taped closed and said "Nix" on the front. I slit the tape with a fingernail and unfolded the note. My evil expression seceded into an evil grin and the grin grew with every line I read.

I looked behind me and made eye-contact. I nodded once. He mouthed what looked like "Thank you."

Ω

* * *

Author Note Time: That's right! The Randal has returned from the dead!! Uh... I mean...

Anyway, I lost my inspiration over the sumer. Plus I was playing Crisis Core. My deepest apologies.


	13. Day 10

Day 10

* * *

Disclaimer: Don't own FFVII, do own a junky MP3. Wish I could change both of those, but, whatever.

* * *

I jumped like a startled cat when a 12 inch ruler slammed onto my desk next to my head. I stared at the implement, then at its wielder.

"Mrs. Randal," I said sounding scandalized, but still tired, "I thought you were an English teacher!"

Randal glared, most of the class smirked.

She had been in the middle of giving us notes on parts of speech for the test when I'd dozed off.

She continued her lecture, white chalk squeaking on the blackboard. I felt like I was going to fall asleep again. However I also felt like I was being watched. I looked behind me to see three sets of eyes glance away hastily.

Randal left the room, as usual, and somehow Reeve obtained charge of the classroom.

Also as usual, rules dissolved and Chaos reigned.

"Hey, Nicole!" Sephiroth was suddenly leaning on my desk giving me a charming look. "Did you get it?"

I looked at him darkly. "Yes, I have it."

"May I borrow it then?" He asked with feigned politeness. I looked at him pointedly. "Please?"

I reached into my pocket and took out a small, battered MP3 player. I handed it to him. He turned it on.

"How much does this hold?" he asked critically.

"Barely anything," I replied, "I had to delete most of my _Phantom _music and some of The Cure to get the songs you wanted on there! Now I'm pretty much left with Gackt stuff and some junk by Kat-tun_…_"

"Better than _Phantom_."

I glared at him.

"What's going on?" Aerith asked as Reeve opened his backpack, revealing Cait Sith.

"I put all the songs on one playlist," I said, "the one titled 'Sephiroth'."

He looked sharply at me. "Thanks a lot."

"No problem." I smirked. I snatched the MP3 back and pocketed the headphones.

I tossed the cheap machine to Cait Sith. "Thankee miss!" The robot climbed under the computer desk, nesting himself among the tangled wires.

"What's going—?"

"Okay, so the whole thing was Reeve's idea…" I said, looking at him.

Reeve nodded. "I noticed that Randal has a nice sound system, and Cid suggested that we should use it against her…"

"Sephiroth and I made the playlist!" I chimed in.

Sephiroth looked at me suspiciously. "Did you change something?"

"I only added some stuff…" I said innocently.

Sephiroth looked like he was going to try and kill me, but I was saved by a noise outside the room. There was a mad dash back to all our respective seats. We pretended that we had been studying the whole time. I couldn't help but glance at the arsenal like array of speakers, subwoofers and other unidentifiable sound equipment by Randal's desk.

The room was silent, but not for long. A powerful, steady baseline was pouring quietly out of the teacher's desk. Randal cocked her head at it. The volume increased slowly and steadily and a set of higher notes began to form the song.

I couldn't help it, I breathed the familiar song title; "One Winged Angel." I glanced back at Sephiroth, who was looking extremely arrogant.

Randal seemed to be trying to ignore it, but as the satanic-sounding Latin lyrics began, she looked wary and moved backwards towards the door, staring in the direction of the sound. She left the room quickly, still moving backwards. The moment the door clicked shut, most of the class started laughing, even those who had no taste for the music playing.

"_Ne me mori facias_…" I sang along. "Hey, we should blame it on ghosts or something!"

The music had reached such a volume that the windows rattled on low notes.

"Wait," Cloud shouted over the music, "Isn't there supposed to be a dead body in here somewhere?"

I looked up in an inspired way; however, I seemed to be the only person who was not at least mildly put off by the idea of unearthing a murder. Nonetheless, Cloud and I both got up and started poking around in true RPG fashion. I was checking suspicious places on the walls and Cloud was checking the ugly orange carpet for seams.

Cait Sith crawled out of the mass of cords and Reeve walked to him. Instructions were conveyed that the prank was to continue for as long as possible, meaning the music should be turned off outside of classes so as to keep the source untraceable. Another part of the plan required the music not to be at maximum volume.

I, however, wasn't paying any attention to Reeve. I was more interested in listening to the wall. "People!" I shouted, despite that the music had been turned off by Cait Sith, There's a hollow place in the wall!" The room was silent. I tapped on the wall again, but before I could get confirmation of my observation the door opened and two people came in.

"Mrs. Randal!" I said in a slightly melodramatic way, "I was looking for where the noise was coming from, but it stopped! I couldn't trace it!"

Randal opened her mouth, furious, eyes blazing, but Mr. Hyman, the school's computer expert interrupted her, "So what did you find out?"

"Well…" I danced over to where the computer was. "I checked the speaker's connection to the computer and its fine, so either it's not really coming from the speakers or it's some kind of virus on the computer…"

Mr. Hyman's walrus mustache twitched as he tapped away at the keyboard. "Well, It looks to me like this computer is normal. I'll run a virus check…"

Several minutes later Mr. Hyman left.

Mrs. Randal glowered.

The bell rang.

We fled.

* * *

AuthorNote: In case you don't believe me, this prank _is_ possible. I've done it. Not on a teacher, but… It's pretty funny to watch someone's face when they think they're just emailing someone and incoherent Gackt music suddenly comes out of their computer speakers…

I know what you're thinking: "OMFG, Nix wrote two chapters in a WEEK! The world is going to END!!" Well, don't get used to it, I'm still a mortal and I still get English homework.


	14. Day 11

Day 11

* * *

Disclaimer: All hail Tetsuya Nomura and Nobuo Uematsu.

Note: Some epic background music is required for this chapter, so I recommend that you look up the song Dancing Mad on YouTube.

* * *

"I was always told that I would love this book," I complained, "And I kind of do, but, because of all the stupid analysis, I'm beginning to despise it…"

"Well, I just don't like it." Sephiroth said.

"That's because you're a sadistic freak, Sephiroth."

"Am not!"

The entire class burst into intense argument and discussion. What exactly happened during the first six chapters of the book? Is Sephiroth really a sadistic freak? Is _To Kill a Mockingbird_ a good book or not? What's the answer to question eight? And why couldn't we have the horrible Miss Caroline teaching English instead of Randal?

Talk of the Devil and the Devil appears, they say. Randal walked into the classroom. She opened her mouth and began to speak, but the moment she did, the Chocobo Theme flared to life. Randal stopped speaking and glared at her desk. The music stopped. "What is the—" she tried again, but the chirpy notes drowned her out. She stopped, and so did the music. She took a deep breath. "This is the last straw!!" she bellowed over the music which brought a cheery, yellow, feathery image to all our minds. "I'm going to the principal!" She slammed the door behind her. This time the music played on.

"Yah, go ahead and go to the principal… He won't do a darned thing for you!" I shouted at the closed door, laughing. It was true; the principal hated Randal and publicly wished he could get rid of her. However, Randal was the stronger personality and got everything she wanted. Ergo, the badass speakers.

The Chocobo Theme was met with met with a measureable degree more enthusiasm than One Winged Angel had. I wasn't the only person humming along, but I was the only air-guitarist.

However, I knew the awesome song would end. I knew what the next song on the playlist was; it was one of my own ideas, the longest song on my MP3 player.

Dancing Mad, Final Fantasy VI final battle theme.

A low, chiming undertone began the song. Sephiroth stiffened with recognition. He stared at me, his eyes glowing even brighter than usual. When the voice-esque part of the song started, he literally jumped out of his seat and over his desk in my direction. I barely got out of his way fast enough. Shockingly I was still on my feet.

"Why the _HELL _did you do this?!" He shouted at me.

I dodged an extremely badly aimed and timed punch by mere centimeters and stumbled backwards. "I thought… well, I like the song!"

"Well, I don't!"

I took this as a queue and dodged in amongst the other student's desks. I feinted, misstepped, tripped, fell hard and hid under Yuffie's desk. Sephiroth had to spend enough time forcibly moving Yuffie out of the way that I was able to stand and put Yuffie's desk between us.

"What do you have against Dancing Mad?!"

He twitched and I realized my mistake. I ran and wisely used Barrett as a human shield. I pretended to run out around one side, but instead I moved the other direction mimicking Sora's Dodge Roll move swiftly. When I stood, Sephiroth was already there to meet me with a blow to the right side of my face.

"Stop."

Sephiroth froze, then we both turned, I was holding a hand over my eye. Lucrecia was standing in the now empty center of the room where Yuffie's desk would have been. At that moment, the music changed to a lower, but more sinister-sounding melody.

She looked Sephiroth in the eye and he glowered back. The mental battle between them was almost more epic than the physical one that had just finished. It was also nearly as one-sided.

Sephiroth looked at the ground, then glared at me. He stalked back to his desk and sat there, gazing over his steepled fingers silently, as though meditating.

The rest of the room was in chaos. I tried to help everyone move the desks and chairs back into their proper positions, but Aerith wouldn't let me do anything, she was hounding me to go to see the nurse.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"What am I gonna say? 'Sephiroth hit me'? I don't want to get him in trouble."

Sephiroth glanced up, shocked for a moment, then he noticed that I was looking at him and went back to his meditation with a slightly more melancholy expression than before.

Cloud was looking between me and Sephiroth with a very dark expression.

Randal re-entered the classroom, but by that time the room was back in order, we were sitting at desks and Dancing Mad had ended. It was also five minutes to end of the period.

"Brent, what happened to your eye?" Randal snapped.

"I ran into a door." I lied stiffly.

Randal glanced around the room, then looked away from us. Evidently, she didn't want to know.

Class ended without incident and I got through the rest of the day by saying that I had regressed back to being the World's Biggest Klutz.

The only problem was when my mom asked, rather worriedly how I'd gotten myself a black eye. I wasn't much of a fighter or exceedingly daredevilish, so this was probably the first black eye I'd had in my life.

My answer was the truth, "I ticked off Sephiroth, so he hit me."

"Sephiroth hit you?"

"Yah, I pretty much deserved it though." I swaggered away to my room to do homework. My mother stared after me. From her dim knowledge of Final Fantasy lore, my statements defied all logic.

* * *

Real Author Note this time: I wrote the entire fight scene in one sitting. It's an awesome fight scene, no? More to come. I'm addicted to fight scenes all of the sudden...

* * *

Okay, for those of you who don't have a account and can't figure out how to anonymously review, (you know who you are…) here's what I hope will be a sufficient explanation…

In order to _submit a review_, look in the the lower left had corner, there should be a little drop-down boxy thing. Choose "Submit Review." Type in a name and a review. Hit "Submit Review."

The box thing should be around here somewhere.  
V


	15. Day 12

Day 12

* * *

Disclaimer: Just because ENTIRE ROOM is covered in sketches of Sephiroth and Vincent and Lucrecia doesn't mean I own Final Fantasy.

* * *

"Nix!"

I looked around. It was Sephiroth. "Are you going to punch me again?" I asked, smiling slightly. It wasn't like it didn't hurt; it was just too much of an honor to be punched by Sephiroth for me to take it badly.

"No…" He looked at the ground. "I wanted to apologize."

I looked at him skeptically. "Did Lucrecia put you up to this?"

"No." He looked mildly offended by this. "Why would you think that?"

"It's a joke," I said, "Can't you take a joke?"

"I guess I can't…" he said.

There was silence for a moment.

"… anyway, there's no need to apologize… It was my fault."

It was Sephiroth's turn to look skeptical.

"I was totally asking for it. I knew the song would annoy you, 'cause it's the theme song of only FF bad guy who's even debatably cooler than you. That's why I put it on there. So _I'm _sorry. There. We're square. It's over." I smiled at him. The bell to go to our first class rang. "See you in Hell-hour!" I shouted, walking away.

* * *

When I entered the classroom I was later than I usually would be. For about half a second I didn't notice anything, then the large white letters on the blackboard caught my attention.

"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!"

It was the very same phrase that was written in white-out pen inside my binder.

I walked up to my desk and turned to stare down the rest of the class. Everyone was in their seats, all looking like they were going to start laughing at the slightest thing. "Okay who did this and why wasn't I in on it?"

No one responded. Lucrecia was glaring at Sephiroth, who was looking back at her, his eyes holding as much innocence as slit-pupil, glowing, blue-green eyes can.

I was at my desk with the rest of the class when Randal entered. She noticed the blackboard as quickly as I had and stiffened. "Who did this…?" she asked, sounding like it was some terrible crime.

Everyone looked at Sephiroth.

"Don't look at me! It was here when I got here!" He said. "Someone probably snuck in here between classes or something…"

Randal turned, picked up an eraser, and cleaned the board. Oddly, she seemed to have accepted this alibi.

Reeve and Cait had premeditated a quiet day, today, and for every other day that we were to take the Parts of Speech Quiz.

Randal's plan was this:

You must get 100 percent on the Quiz.

You will take the Quiz every day until such time that you achieve 100.

The test will continue to be taken until every student has received 100.

Once you have 100, you may read while the rest of the class re-takes the test.

Did I mention an emphasis on 100 percent?

Today, we were also taking a test on chapters 9-12 of To Kill a Mockingbird. The class period was one of the most uneventful I had ever experienced in her class. I had finished the Parts of Speech Quiz, (sure that I'd at least gotten a 95) when a note was launched onto my desk from behind me.

"_I'm bored.—Shadow Warrior_"

"_You're bored, so you're passing notes for the hell of it?—Captain H._"

"_Yep.—Shadow Warrior_"

"_Fcking idiot.—Captain H._"

"_Sorry Shadow, but I agree with the Captain.—Spike_

"_P.S. Couldn't come up with a better alias, so shut it._"

"_It's fitting!—Flower Girl_"

"_Almost… too fitting. On the other hand, I shouldn't be talking, heh. –Chaos_"

"_D'ya think she's ever gonna catch us passing notes?—Shadow Warrior"_

"_D'ya think she's going to notice that we even exist… how hooked she seems to be on that computer…—Spike"_

"_I wonder what she's doing on it._ _Nix, can you see her computer from where you're sitting?—Captain H._"

"_Well, I can see it just a little. It looks like an MMO… Maybe World of Warcraft? Yah, I'm betting its World of Warcraft.—Nix_"

"_World of Warcraft? Doesn't that seem… a bit out of character? — ¼ Moon_"

"_I was stating the facts! It looks like World of Warcraft! Actually, I was also partially kidding… —Nix_

"_P.S. Moon, your name is so nerdy… it's perfect. I love it._"

"_Um… thanks, I think? — ¼ Moon_"

"_Oh, she's on WoW? I was going to guess she was on YouTube… — Flower Girl_"

"_I think she'd need headphones to be on YouTube, Flowers.—Spike_"

"_While we're passing notes, anyone care to help me on the test?—Masemune_"

"_No.—Chaos_"

"_No way.—Spike_"

"_Creep!—Shadow Warrior_"

"_Absolutely not!—¼ Moon_"

"_Sure, I'll help you. How 'bout this: STUDY.—Nix_"

"_LOLZ—Shadow Warrior_"

"_I hate you all. Especially Nix.—Masemune_"

* * *

"Hey! Sephiroth!" I saw him ahead of me in the hallway; his hair wasn't too hard to spot.

I caught up to him when he was blocked from continuing by a huge group of younger students whom he was watching with the air of a monster truck driver watching ducklings cross in front of him. I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Oh, It's you," He said barely civilly.

"Yah, anyway, I wanted to ask, did you write that on Randal's blackboard? Really? Because it was genius."

He looked at me with a very odd expression. "You aren't planning to tell on me to Lucrecia, Randal or any of the others?"

"Do I look like a snitch?" I asked evenly.

"Kinda." He smirked behind his bangs.

I was mildly offended. "Well, I'm not."

"I know." the smirk faded "So, to answer your question." He looked at me in the eye for the first time during the whole conversation. "Yah, I did write that… I noticed that it was written in white-out on the inside of your binder."

I was completely stunned. I didn't think that he'd have paid any attention.

"So, really," He concluded, smiling his classic I-know-something-you-don't-know smile, "It's all your fault." He strode off to his sixth period class.

"One day…" I whispered, "I am going to get so fed up…"

--

Author Note: If you didn't understand the aliases, you probably don't know the characters… And I shall laugh at you.

Nobody got the Dancing Mad thing?! Are there _NO_ FF VI fans here? Kefka the evil clown is going to come after you all! In your SLEEP!

...There, I updated, stop bugging me.


	16. Day13

Day 13

* * *

Disclaimer: As per usual, don't own a thing, even Chocobo Tales.

Also, there's some stronger language than I've used before in here so kiddies, ye be warned. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

* * *

"The… pain..." Sephiroth shouted half-melodramatic, half sarcastically.

"Hey, I thought only I talked like that." I commented mildly.

"I hate Chuck Norris jokes. Or at least the way the idiots in my math class tell them…"

I smiled mildly, "You know what I always used to do about Chuck Norris jokes?"

"What?"

"If Chuck Norris is president, Sephiroth is God."

"You shouldn't be giving him these ideas!" Yuffie shouted, terrified.

Sephiroth "So however cool Chuck Norris is I'm better?"

"Yah, pretty much."

Pondering this he walked to his desk in the back.

Randal entered, followed—or being dragged, as the case may be—by another person. This other person was a student, a highly despised and annoying kid who whose tongue could not be held by either staff or student body. Randal was the only person in the entire district who could handle him.

She grabbed his shoulder and tossed him into the empty desk closest to her computer. "Get a haircut." She hissed, barely audibly. Jake's hair was a bit past shoulder length and had been dyed bright blue in seventh grade. So now his sandy blonde hair had long blue tips and an unkempt appearance.

"Yo, dogs." Jake said casually to the people closest to him. "Hey, spiky blonde guy!" Cloud glanced over furiously. "You gel your hair?"

"No." Cloud said, "I stand in out in storms with a lightning rod."

A majority of the class laughed cautiously, watching Randal. Oddly, she was completely ignoring us.

Jake looked miffed by his reaction. But, apparently, He wasn't about to give up on being annoying. He was determined to get the better of someone, anyone. "Hey, you," Jake shouted across the room, leaning back in his chair, "Hot chick in the front. Sittin' in the middle. Yah, talkin' to you."

Aerith and I were the only people who Lucrecia freeze completely, a look of what almost amounted to terror on her face. Aerith and I exchanged expressions of worry.

The half-laughing environment in the room was gone. There was a tension focused on the three people in the room. Lucrecia, mortified. Vincent, severely pissed off. Jake, oblivious to his impending doom.

"Look at me, would ya? What's your name, babe?"

He was going to say something else, but the tension was broken by Yuffie's shout. "Jake, You're gonna get yourself _shot_!!"

But it was too late.

Vincent had stood and leapt across the classroom. The brass gauntlet over the knuckles of his left hand made contact with Jake's face and came away bloody.

"Vincent!" He would have kept fighting if Lucrecia hadn't called him off.

He was breathing hard, almost shaky from the sudden flare and drain of emotion. His eyes seemed blank in comparison to the bloody hue they'd taken on a moment ago. He walked slowly across the room, followed by every pair of eyes in the room but Randal's. He sat down slowly on the ground next to Lucrecia's chair and put his head on her knee. He looked either asleep or about to cry.

Jake, on the other hand was in shock. He was touching his face, blood covering his fingertips. It wasn't bleeding badly, and it had probably hurt his pride far, far worse than his face. He looked at Randal, shocked that she wasn't doing anything to help him.

Randal started handing out the day's vocabulary test. Vincent's place on the floor was completely ignored. Jake was taking it also, but only after he'd wiped the majority of blood from his face and hands with tissues.

Randal had complete control over the class again.

Those who had already passed didn't have to take it again. Lucrecia, was among these, but instead of reading, as she was supposed to, she put her head on the desk and talked softly to him, stroking the side of his head.

Randal was looking around the room, her expression carefully blank. However when, for the first time since he'd punched Jake, Randal looked at Vincent something flashed in her eye. Thankfulness, triumph?

It was gone in less than half of a second.

Once the test was over there was silence in the room again. Jake was still nursing his face.

"You deserved it." Yuffie hissed at him.

"I'm gonna kick your ass, scrawny girl…" He snarled by way of a response.

"Yah, right, you're gonna kick a ninja's ass?" Yuffie said it almost mockingly.

"Chuck Norris eats ninjas for breakfast." Jake's voice seemed defeated and hurt, but it wasn't to be left at that.

Sephiroth looked up, green eyes glinting. "I eat Chuck Norris for breakfast!" He almost shouted. The tension that had taken control of the room finally completely broke again.

Jake, was stunned by the ready response, but recovered relatively quickly, and with his characteristic snarl directed now at Sephiroth. "Your mom eats Chuck Norris for breakfast."

The class was completely stunned for a moment. Lucrecia looked, from where I was sitting, mortified and furious again.

Ignoring this, the class started laughing. Even Vincent opened his eyes and smiled reassuringly up at her, amused.

Sephiroth had his face in his arms and his shoulders were shaking. He was either laughing or crying very hard.

Randal and I were both surveying the events closely, but for different reasons. Randal didn't get the joke, and I had gained a flash of insight. I was curious and decided that a confrontation was in order.

* * *

"Hey!"

Class was long over and Jake was long gone, he'd realized that our group would beat him at every turn. Knowing Jake, however, he had far from given up.

It seemed he could not resist making a last pass at Vincent's pride. When Randal dragged him by the shoulder towards the exit of the room He turned back, kissed his fingers and waved to Lucrecia. She and I had to hold Vincent to allow Randal to get Jake out of the room. We only succeeded because he didn't struggle much.

But that is neither here, nor there.

"Hey, Sephiroth!" I shouted across the road. He stopped and turned to see who was talking to him. He noticed it was me, rolled his eyes and stood looking highly aloof.

"Sephiroth I have a question for you." I would've asked Lucrecia if I'd been able to find her first but…

I caught up to him, breathing hard. He started walking again.

"Could you just wait a minute!?" I half-panted half-snapped.

His expression was stony and he didn't look at me. "It's better to walk than to come to a dead stop."

I glared but kept his swift pace until I'd caught my breath.

"Now." He looked down at me from his full and considerable height. I was reminded of a lion and not for the first time. "You had a question for me?"

"Yah," I said, regretting not just waiting and looking for Lucrecia. "When James… the 'your mom' thing… Lucrecia…"

"What about her?"

_Quit playing dumb._ "You know that she's…"

"My mother? Yah. She's… she's alright." He want quiet for a moment, thinking. "We don't really talk at all… ever. But… I still feel close to her. We're sort of connected. I guess she sort of knows what I'm thinking sometimes, which is… She is really the only thing that protects me against the others emotionally."

I thought I ought to snap Sephiroth out of his poetic mood before he hurt himself. "And you never talk to each other?"

"No not really." He went quiet again.

We'd reached the place where he turned and went in the direction of wherever-the-heck he and the rest lived.

"Sephiroth?"

"Yah?"

"Where are the others?"

He shrugged. "They went ahead."

"Why'd you stay behind?"

He shrugged again and turned his back to me, walking in his lonely direction. "I wanted to avoid Cloud."

* * *

Author Note: The word doc I'm typing this in has breached fifty pages and twenty thousand words…

Ω


	17. Day 14

Day 14

* * *

Disclaimer: Don't own the FFVII people, and the teacher introduced in this chapter is based on a real person. People who go to my old school: Yes, you should be afraid, be _very_ afraid…

* * *

I entered the classroom as I usually would and sat at my desk. I decided that my binder would make a good pillow, so I tried to sleep on it. It wasn't really that cushy. My PS2 controller was far better to sleep on.

Unfortunately, my conscience got the better of me when I felt Randal glowering at me, so I sat up again.

"Brent you are aware that sleeping in class can earn you a severe punishment?"

I looked up at her, dazedly. "Do you know…?" I said to Randal, sounding hypnotized. Everyone stared at me. "The muffin man?" My head fell down into my arms and I started part laughing, part crying and almost completely falling asleep.

Once I had made a full recovery I looked up, paying half-way attention to what was going on in the lesson.

There was an argument in the class about whether or not verbs could act as the subject of the sentence.

"But Mrs. Randal, do verbs really get so bored of their jobs that they have to get new ones?"

"Must be pretty boring being a verb."

"But verbs get to do all the fun action-y stuff!"

"I'd go stir crazy if all I got to do was sit in the middle of a stupid little sentence diagram and look cute…"

"It'd be boringer to be a preposition, I think."

I caught the paper note tossed to me, as I was prepared for it's coming by shrewd eye-contact. I recognized the hand easily as Lucrecia's.

"_Why was Randal acting like that yesterday? She seems to be back to normal now…_"

It seemed that there was no need for aliases.

"_It was Jake. He's her great nephew or something like that… She _hates _him. So, I guess she was pleased when Vince punched him in the face…_"

I crinkled my nose upon comparing my chicken-scratch half-print with Lucrecia's writing. I tossed the note back.

"_Wait, Jake is related to Randal?_"

"_Yep. Their eyes are the exact same color, actually. He's sworn that one day he'll get colored contacts_…"

"_Either way, she should have been more considerate… he was bleeding and she didn't let him go to the nurse_."

"_That's just how the Randal rolls, Lucrecia. You have to get used to cruelty if you want to survive the school system_."

"_I never thought it was really this bad. I mean, all of my other teachers are nowhere near as bad as Randal. Actually, I revise that statement; _most_ of my other teachers are nowhere near as bad as Randal_…"

"_Oh, right you have the science teacher of evilness … Poor you!_"

"_It's alright, Vincent's in my class anyway_…

"_And by the way…'Vince'?_" There was an arrow up to the place where I'd written the name.

"_Heh, heh… Yah, everyone gets pet-names in my head, I just don't use them to their faces..._"

I never got to see Lucrecia's response, because not for the first time that day I felt Randal's eyes on me. She came up to my desk this time, however, and asked to see my binder. I obliged, having very little by way of a choice, and Randal flipped open the front cover with one finger and turned it to face her. She glared at the decoration. Below a rather lame sketch of a frightening caped cyborg were the words "CATS: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US."

A form fluttered onto Cats's face. It was instant after-school detention and a threat to make it a daily occurrence, if I didn't "behave".

* * *

"_I AM GONG TO MURDER YOU_!!" I shouted, leaping forward in the middle of the hallway and punching Sephiroth as hard as I could in the stomach. He didn't flinch, but my hand hurt a lot. I really should have known better, but at least it still made me feel a little better.

"I am still going to kill you…!" I said, nursing my hand, still glaring.

"I doubt that," Sephiroth said. "Anyway, if you killed me, Lucrecia wouldn't be too happy with you, and you wouldn't want that."

I was irked. Sephiroth was using my outgoing personality and tendency to be very obvious to my disadvantage. I limped off like a kicked dog to my next class, almost ready to declare the worst day of my life.

By the end of the day, I was still hurt, physically and emotionally and I decided I ought to call my mom to tell her that I had detention after school today and wouldn't be walking home on time.

"What did you get in trouble for?"

"Something written in my binder…"

"What did you write?"

"'All your base are belong to us.' Old, badly translated video game quote…"

"And you got detention for that?"

"That's ridiculous!"

"That's Randal. Hey, if sisters ask, tell them I'm having a shot-in-the-butt-with-a-staple-gun kind of a day."

"Uh… okay?"

"Thanks." I hung up.

I was outside the classroom of the second most evilest teacher at the school. His name had reached the rank of Voldemort's and he was now known only as: Kilt Man.

I entered the room, (thankfully, Kilt Man wasn't there) and sat in a corner which was only inhabited by what on first glance looked like a sleeping hobo, but on closer inspection was a dejected looking Cid Highwind.

"Hello," he grunted.

"Hey, Cid. What're you in for?"

He laughed. "Getting caught smoking on campus."

"Clever, Cid."

"It's the getting caught part that's the problem… Why are you here, anyway?"

"I had 'All your base are belong to us' written in my binder…"

"Ah, so you wrote that?"

"I did not. I just had it written in my binder." My vengeful streak emerged. "Sephiroth wrote it on the board. To get me in trouble, I think."

"Really?" Cid looked highly incredulous. It was the first time I'd looked at Cid close up in a long time. He didn't look good. He looked tired and very stressed. It was a look I recognized from seeing other junior high student's faces, including my own.

"Yah, Sephiroth told me so, but he told me not to tell anyone…"

Cid was about to say something, but at that moment, Kilt Man entered the room and his presence demanded absolute silence.

Kilt Man was a tall brawny guy with, I guessed, not a drop of Irish blood in him. His kilt was a conservatively designed kaki colored man-skirt. His head was balding with tufts of red-brown. He had a deep commanding voice and a forceful nature to match his physique.

There was silence in the room for thirty minutes, broken only by Cid's soft snoring. I was mildly wishing I had some whipped cream and a feather. Instead I poked Cid with the back of my pencil.

He woke up and looked at me blearily. I shoved a note in his face.

"_You'll tell everyone it was Sephiroth and not me, right?_"

Cid rolled his eyes grabbed the note and my pencil, wrote a reply, and shoved my stuff back at me.

"_Of course I'm telling' everyone! You think I'd miss something' like that? Now LET ME SLEEP._"

I spent the rest of the detention period pondering what may have been meant by "something' like that."

* * *

Author Note: I _tried_ to publish this on Friday... It was finished then. But will my computer let me? NOOOOO!

"Sorry, your internet connection has been SCREWED OVER BY HOJO. Have a nice day!"

-goes off and fumes-


	18. Day 15

Day 15

Disclaimer: Just so you know, I didn't make up the grammar quiz… nor did I make up the Final Fantasy characters.

School hadn't started yet and I was talking to my friends in the courtyard. I thought I was safe from the otherworldly chaos that was my English class. I was wrong.

"Nicole!" I turned to see Lucrecia walking purposefully towards me. "Nix, can I ask a _big_ favor?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Fire away."

"Well, do you have any sort of hair detangler I could use?" She glanced backwards for half of a second. I looked at the place she had and saw a shred of red fabric trailing from behind a pillar where Vincent was obviously trying to hide. You don't have to be in the High Capability level math class to put two and two together.

"Is _he_ okay with this?"

Lucrecia looked slightly uncomfortable with the question. "I don't know… " She gave me a beseeching look. "Please?"

I sighed. "Seeing as it will be used for such devious purposes, I consent."

Lucrecia smiled brightly. "Thank you! Can you bring it tomorrow?"

"Sure."

I turned back to my friends, who were looking at me strangely. "What was that all about?"

"Just a drama," I assured them. "Feel free to continue ranting, Morgan. I didn't understand a word you just said, anyway…"

Class began the same way it normally did, excepting the philippic speech on our class's idiocy. Yesterday, two of the three last people to finish the grammar quiz had gotten full credit. Without using names she made it blatantly obvious that Sephiroth was the last person to be finished. She also implicitly called him an idiot several times.

The Randal left the room swiftly after assigning us another mind-rendingly confusing sentence diagramming packet.

I turned around just as swiftly. "Sephiroth!"

He took his head out of his hands to look at me. "Yah, I know. I suck, okay?" He put his face back into his hands.

"That's not what I was going to say… I was going to ask why you haven't been able to ace this test easy…" I was crossing the room to stand near enough for polite conversation.

"Well, the first day I just forgot to study." Sephiroth grinned frighteningly. "After that, I decided I didn't care. Not because I'd screwed it up, more because…"

"It was your personal tirade against the demonic forces of The Randal?" I completed for him.

"I wouldn't have put it that way, but…"

"So now you're being defiant for the hell of it and making life worse for the rest of us?" We turned to see Cloud glowering at Sephiroth.

"How am I making your life worse, Cloud?" Sephiroth asked eerily politely.

"A lot of ways. In the context of this test however…"

Sephiroth's shoulders tensed.

"We just sit here every day not doing anything useful!

"Hey," I piped up, feeling obligated to state my opinion, "I ain't complainin' about not having to do English class…"

"I don't give a damn about your opinion, Nicole." He was still looking into Sephiroth's eyes. "I personally am sick and tired of being yelled at by this teacher because of you."

Cloud's comment and his argumentative style fascinated me. Was he sincere, or was he using Randal as a tool to torment Sephiroth? It was the type of vision into the Human Condition which was the reason I generally enjoyed English.

Sephiroth did not find it amusing. "It's not _my _fault Randal's an ass." He had recovered from his anger and taken on his classic supirioristic air. "I'm trying to give this teacher what she deserves, but if you decide to _take her side_…" Cloud seemed to be trying his utmost to give himself a blonde uni-brow. "If you guys just egg her on this isn't going to work."

"Sephiroth, I don't think Randal is the only person who you're going to ruin." He glanced at me for a split second. I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was talking about the fact that Sephiroth had framed me in the CATS incident.

"At least I'm not trying to start the third World War…" I whispered. I noticed with a shock the considerable difference in our heights, not to mention Sephiroth being even taller.

"I'm just trying to survive until we can get back."

"If we're going to survive, we're going to have to stick together." I was glaring into Cloud's eyes, the blue of which was nowhere near as frightening as Sephiroth's.

Unexpectedly the door of the classroom opened. "Sit down," Randal hissed.

We obeyed without hesitation. The entire class was already silent.

Sephiroth looked like he was trying to burn Cloud's hair telepathically. Cloud, however was watching me carefully.

I looked down at the paper in front of me and continued the assignment, hyperconscious of the ripple the argument had caused. It was not a good one; it threw into sharp relief the deep division between parts of the class. I had only before seen cliques of girls have such rivalries before.

What was to happen was inevitable, but I had unfortunately hastened the process…

Author Note: Meesa sorry for no posting chapter… Messa had mucha, mucha homework. Meesa just wanna watch Sci-Fi movies.

With regards to a comment I received a while back concerning Tifa's silence; notice that all the characters I _don't _like have faded into the background… I guess this is kind of true-ish. I don't notice people I don't care about in real life.

And I didn't have time to do a Halloween chapter, sorry.


	19. Day 16

* * *

Disclaimer: An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters wrote this. Not me.

* * *

I opened the door of the English classroom warily, something felt wrong. There were only a few people in the classroom. I sat down at my desk and looked to my right. Lucrecia was at her desk and Vincent was sitting on her desk, looking gloomy for some reason.

"Something up?" I asked concernedly.

"The sky," he responded cynically.

I looked up. He was right.

"Yes," Yuffie commented dreamily looking up too, "But what is beyond the sky?"

"The Starship Enterprise," was my response. It was met with silence, and a single raised eyebrow from Yuffie.

"What is that?" Lucrecia asked.

I looked down at my desk to see a bell jar with a clock in it. Only mildly surprised by this I examined it. "It's a space-time converter." I said confidently.

"What are you doing with it?"

"Well I'm going to…" I stopped suddenly, brow furrowed. I looked back up at Lucrecia. "If I told you, you would cease to exist."

"Oh."

The only person who seemed disconcerted by this was Sephiroth.

People trickled into the room slowly, but soon all the seats were full. However, I felt like something was missing. "Who's missing…?" I racked my brains, mumbling to myself. A few minutes later, it seemed I had found the answer. "Barrett! Where's Barrett?"

Yuffie looked at me sinisterly. "Barrett… doesn't exist."

The odd feeling of something being out of place had returned, even more strongly now. It was heightened even more by the last person who entered. He was dressed oddly; distinctly Shakespearian with a ruff and tights, his face was also painted white, red and black, like a clown.

"Kefka!!" I shouted, "What are you doing here?"

"Eh?"

"You aren't in this fan fiction!!!"

He pondered this for a moment, and then said, "You know what? You're actually right! There's a shocker for ya!"

Kefka vanished and Sephiroth's Masemune swung through the space where he had been.

"Dangit Nix!" Sephiroth's face was furious, "You screwed it up!!!"

He didn't have time to try and kill me.

Randal had appeared. She slammed her staff to the ground forcefully causing an echoing ring. At the same moment, green flames sprang up across the door.

"YOU MAY NOT LEAVE." Randal hissed, stroking the raven on her shoulder.

"But…" I breathed, "I have to… They all have to!" I looked at the class desperately.

Tifa had stood and was lunging at—no through—Randal with one of her vicious Monk-classic attacks.

Randal's outline shimmered like a hologram, but she just smiled. I stared, breathing hard, I felt like I was going to die.

There was a slightly plinky high-pitched noise and I realized that it was another person's turn to attack.

Cloud leapt forward, large sword swinging through Randal. It had a similar lack of affect. The plinking noise repeated itself.

Gackt was sitting on my desk, dressed as a blonde vampire-prince or something, crooning over an electric guitar.

"No!" I said, as though in a trance. "Physical attacks won't harm her! You need to use MAGIC!"

A large, ginger furred squirrel with only one eyebrow was can-canning in the space where Barett normally sat.

"We don't have any materia!" Yuffie shouted, panicked.

Gackt's guitar spontaneously combusted, so he threw it across the room.

I looked around, wondering whose turn it was to attack when Nanaki bounded through the green flames and latched his jaws around Randal's neck. When his tail hit her, the entirety of her midnight-colored robes burst into flames and she melted, screaming like the Wicked Witch of the West. As though to add insult to injury, a moogle riding a chocobo suddenly fell from the sky onto the puddle of blackness which was Randalificent.

The squirrel was shot dead by a staple gun loaded with pennies wielded by a mysterious ninja-walrus.

There was a dull, blurred silence in the face of triumph, interrupted only by the sound of hollow, mechanical breathing. I turned in slow-motion and saw a noose suddenly tighten itself around Sephiroth's neck. He looked almost frightened. "No, no……. NO!" I shouted, standing and pointing at Yuffie, "Spock, get BACK in your animal cracker!!"

A pink platypus swam across the sealing, chasing Hello Kitty, who was holding a machine gun.

As though summoned, a hologram-like image of Mr. Spock appeared next to Yuffie, mimicking her every movement and expression.

Gackt was in a corner of the room now, pleading apologetically in incoherent Japanese at what was left of his guitar.

"Nix…" Spock's and Yuffie's voices were overlaid, speaking in sync. "Remember, Nix, Materia is the only way to…"

"UWEE-HEE-HEE!"

* * *

I jolted awake and banged my head on the real, solid, platypus-free ceiling of my room.

Rubbing my head where the bruise was forming, I looked at the clock. It was 1 AM. "Snap…" I muttered, laying back down and closing my eyes to get back to sleep. I moved the PS2 controller out from under my cramped neck and surprised myself by almost immediately dozing back to sleep. But not before confusedly mumbling the words, "fan fiction…?"

* * *

Author Note: DON'T GET MAD AT ME!!!! PLEASE! I just love foreshadowing too much…

Ya know what?! You're lucky to even get this much. My internet connection is completely and totally down. I had to get a new wireless card to publish this... I blame Hojo. –Sips coffee cup containing low-cal hot chocolate.–


	20. Day16

Day 16

* * *

Disclaimer: Despite having hair almost identical in length and color to Lucrecia's I do not own a bottle of hair detangler. Not one that works anyway…

* * *

That morning I walked to school in the dark fingering the bottle of hair detangler I had stolen from my house. I had obviously been the person to ask, mostly because my hair was the longest in the school. At least it had been before this year. Sephiroth had snatched the title from me, which was only mildly irksome.

While waiting around in the courtyard, talking to my friends I watched around me for someone. I was in the middle of a ridiculous anecdote concerning my sister when I saw them.

"Hold up there for a second… Lucrecia!!" I pulled the bottle quickly out of my messenger-bag style backpack. I ran up half of the distance to where she was walking and tossed it the rest of the way. Vincent caught it, looked at it and winced, giving it to Lucrecia. She waved at me and shouted "Thank You!"

* * *

I was early leaving lunch because I wanted to go sleep on the desk in my English class. I was the first person in the room and I left the door propped open as an escape route, just in case.

I had my head on my desk, but was interrupted by a slight commotion in the hall.

"I'm _not_ going in there. They'll all laugh at me."

"Stop being immature. They won't laugh at you, you look fine…"

"I look ridiculous. I'm going home."

"Vincent!"

They both entered the room and the first thing I noticed was Vincent's hair. It was not just as it was before, a long matted mess; it was straight and neatly combed. Well, not precisely neat, per say, it still looked like it had a mind of its own, but it _was _brushed, a shocker in itself.

He noticed my attention and smoothed the sides of his hair. "Does it look stupid? Don't lie."

I nodded not really trusting myself to speak, but I did anyway. "It's not… bad…"

"See, I look stupid."

"You do not!" Lucrecia sounded like she was actually pleading at this point.

I had regained my power of speech, so I helped. "It doesn't look stupid, it's just… different… And a lot of other adjectives…"

There was an awkward silence.

Vincent shook his head. "I give up on you two. You just watch." He hugged Lucrecia and walked across the room to his seat.

Lucrecia rolled her eyes after him and sat down to talk to me.

"So have you seen Jake since he was in here?"

I grimaced. "Yah, he's in my Science class. I see him every day. His face has almost healed."

"Has he said anything about this class?"

"Not much… mostly she-dogging about how much he hates Vincent… Hey, I had the weirdest dream last night…"

By this time a few people had joined the room, all of them were staring at Vincent but none of them had said a word.

That is, until Yuffie. "Vincent!? What the hell did you do to your hair!?!"

"It's her fault!" He said quickly, pointing at Lucrecia, who giggled.

Yuffie looked from Vincent to Lucrecia and back. "Yuck! Mushy stuff!" She put her hands over her ears. "I don't want to hear it!" She sat down with her hands over her ears in a fashion which I happened to know didn't block out sound.

Yuffie kept her hands like this until Randal entered the room and gave her a funny look.

The class itself passed uneventfully with nothing more than the tedium of working on grammar projects. Randal apparently needed her caffeine for the day, however.

I was still bothered by something so while Randal was gone I walked across the room to talk to Sephiroth. "Hey, Sephiroth? If someone tried to strangle you with a noose, you'd be able to get it off and be okay, right?"

"That is a very random question."

"Not really. I had a weird dream and someone tried to kill you and—"

"Nix, stop bothering everyone with your weird dream!" Lucrecia said coming up behind me.

I turned and gave an exaggerated ashamed look.

Sephiroth's expression was oddly melancholy.

"Is something up?" I asked, "Or was it what I said about you getting killed?"

He shook his head. "It's nothing."

I looked at Lucrecia, who looked at me incredulously.

"Li-ar…" I sang.

"He had a point, though…" Sephiroth said, dejectedly.

"What, you mean Cloud?"

"Yah."

I snorted. "You have got to be kidding me; he did not have any sort of a point save on the end of his hair… Did you hear how he kept suddenly changing tact as soon as his argument was attacked? It's _classic. _I do that all the time when I'm pissed and tryin' to pick a fight." I put my hands behind my head confidently. Sephiroth stared at me. "Sephiroth, just ignore Cloud, really. He's just PMS-ing."

Lucrecia gave me an utterly disgusted look. "I… I don't even want to think about that."

Sephiroth obviously hadn't a clue what I was talking about. I smirked, but stopped when I saw that Sephiroth was still looking downtrodden.

"Are you really having that bad a time?"

His only answer was to look at me. His normally bright, slightly evil, almost mischievous expression was not there. Only an emptiness which I hadn't seen there before. "Have you noticed that we've broken off into groups?"

I shook my head, lying.

"Yah… Cloud has rallied most of the others… there are some people who aren't taking sides yet, but…" He looked at the group across the room. "It's virtually official now. I overheard some of them wondering which side you'd be on."

I rolled my eyes. "Spike Squad or the Underdog Team, who do you think I'll join?"

"I don't know."

"Then you don't know me at all. Cloud and his people are doing most of the harassing, tormenting, etcetera? " Sephiroth nodded. "Then I'm against him at all costs."

Sephiroth smiled slightly at the sidewise vote of confidence. "Thanks."

"So what do I have to do? Swear an oath? Walk on hot coals?"

Sephiroth really smiled this time.

"See? You can take a joke."

Lucrecia tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "Randal."

I quickly made my way back to my desk, glancing back for only a second and noticing Cloud watching me…

* * *

Author Note:Could someone look up if there's a word for "fear of deadlines"?


	21. Day 17

Day 17

* * *

Disclaimer: In the beginning, Mog created the universe…

* * *

"I just remembered! I've got something for you Lucrecia…"

Lucrecia looked at me quizzically.

"Okay, yah… I know I was supposed to bring this sooner, but… I just remembered this morning… At, like, three o' clock…" I was digging in my backpack and finally produced a bottle filled with a dark red liquid. The bottle was marked "Blood," in sloppy red sharpie. I placed it on her desk proudly.

Lucrecia opened the bottle, examined the liquid and gave me her favorite skeptical look.

"Corn syrup, flour, red and blue food coloring," I recited. "Not in that order though… Anyway, that's the edible version; add laundry detergent and it'll wash out of clothes, according to the recipe."

"Fascinating," she said, handing the bottle back pointedly.

The moment she looked away I slipped the fake blood into her backpack silently.

* * *

When Randal arrived, we were rather unceremoniously informed of the summarizing _Mockingbird_ test we had not been informed of, but should have been studying for over the past month. Once again we were under-informed, and once again this exercise was ridiculous.

Two teams were to be competing against each other, answering any question pertaining to _Mockingbird_ that Randal decided was valid. The team who answered the most questions would be awarded a single, stupid, extra credit point.

Team leaders would choose teams. Randal would choose team leaders.

"Brent!" The Randal pointed to the right side of the classroom. I carefully avoided rolling my eyes and moved to where I had been told to.

"Lockhart!" Tifa assumed her place across the room from me. I looked at her and as we made eye-contact I had the fleeting impression that we were waiting for the strike of high noon to draw.

Tifa broke eye contact and the team picking began. "Cloud." Like a trained dog, Cloud rose and joined his team.

I took up a stance of mocking melodrama, turned backwards an invisible baseball cap and pointed to Sephiroth. "I choose you!"

He swept to the front of the classroom quickly. "I am going to murder you for that…"

"Barrett." I waited respectfully for him to lumber to the front of the room.

"Lucrecia." I motioned for her to stand by me.

As Cid walked over to the other group Lucrecia whispered, "Vincent!"

"Well, off course…" I replied, then louder, "Vincent."

When he joined the group he started to put his arm around Lucrecia's waist, glanced at Randal, then looked at the floor, holding his wrists behind his back sheepishly.

Tifa chose Reeve as well, and I was awarded Aerith and Yuffie as compensation for having gotten second pick.

We lined up and were told that if we talked, sat down, or even so much as leaned against a wall we would lose a point for our team. The entire exercise was pointless, in my opinion.

The game so commenced. "Lockhart, what is the main character of this novel?"

I rolled my eyes as she gave the correct answer. I basically zoned out after answering my own question.

"What is scout's full name?"

"Jean Louise 'Scout' finch. Louise coming from her mother's—"

"That will do, Brent."

After a while, I began paying a great deal more attention to Cloud and Tifa who were whispering conspiratorially whenever Randal wasn't looking. When I knew that Randal could see me I pointedly put a finger to my lips, looking hard at Cloud. Randal saw me and responded by turning to look at Cloud and promptly announcing a point lost from their team.

With that done, I completely ignored the exercise and began daydreaming about what would happen if the Mythbusters were given Randal's head and C-4. I was thinking that, while they were at it, why not murder Hojo as well when my sixth turn to answer a question came up. By this point, all the standing was making me feel a little sick not to mention being almost asleep on my feet.

"Brent, define 'Philippic.'"

"Uh…" I felt myself swaying. Pretty purple and blue fuzzies were obstructing my vision, but disappeared when the room went black without my consciously having closed my eyes.

* * *

I was first aware that I was awake because I was cold. I tried to open my eyes, but decided I didn't particularly feel like it.

"What happened?"

"You passed out…"

"No _shit_..." I snarled, trying to sit up and finally opening my eyes. I saw Lucrecia hovering over me in concern and most of the rest of the class various distances away. I was still in the classroom, lying on three desks pushed together. "Speaking of which, where's Randal?"

Sephiroth pushed himself off of the wall where he'd been leaning to observe the events. "Walking down to the office, apparently. I don't think she understands Phones…" I glanced in Vincent's direction for a half second. He was looking at the ceiling. "So, Quail will probably be arriving soon…"

"Great…" I said, trying to get up off of the desks. Unfortunately, Aerith and Lucrecia both grabbed my shoulders and forced me back down.

I made a face and folded my arms, pouting. "C'mon… I'm _fine_. Seriously, I just… uh… locked my knees."

Tifa looked at me incredulously from across the room. "So you passed out intentionally?"

"Pretty much. Yah."

"You idiot…" Sephiroth whispered behind me.

I sat up quickly to turn and say something snide, but that didn't go as planned. "Aaaah… purple and blue splotches...!" I put a hand over my eyes and lay back down.

"Then you probably shouldn't do that." Aerith told me solemnly.

"Whatever…"

The door opened and Quail entered followed by a harried Randal.

"What happened this time?" Nurse Quail asked, as though people passing out in this room was becoming routine.

Lucrecia answered, using her know-it-all voice, "well, we were reviewing for a test we'll be taking tomorrow and I think Nicole was stressed about it…"

Lucrecia making up anecdotal evidence. If that isn't a show of loyalty, I don't know what is.

Quail bought the story, checked me over quickly and left. Randal glowered at us, so I leapt off the makeshift examination table and helped put the desks where they belonged.

Randal, however, was not so amiable. She refused to call off or postpone the test. Insead, she removed five points from my team tying us. Considering how well our team had creamed Cloud's, I wasn't that worried…

* * *

The bell rang and I started to leave the room but swayed a little as I did so, not fully recovered. I probably would have fallen if someone hadn't grabbed my shoulder to steady me. I looked around and saw Vincent looking at me solemnly.

He took his hand off my shoulder. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yah. Thanks," I said. "And Vincent?... Sorry about the fake blood thing…"

"I thought she gave it back to you?"

"I put it in her backpack when she wasn't looking…"

Vincent rolled his eyes, turned and started to walk away from me, shaking his head. "You are horrible, really."

"Thank you!" I said, laughing.

* * *

Author note: Sorry 'bout this taking so long, I've been _very stressed_ lately...

Special thanks to my real English teacher. She put on my _report card_ that "I wish I had more like you in my class." Depending on your definition of "like me…" Well, be careful what you wish for…


	22. Day 18

Day 18

* * *

Disclaimer: I would be honored to be sued by Square Enix. Really. Well, not really…

* * *

"Omigod, NIX!" Alice ran up and tackle-hugged me at full force, knocking the wind out of me and causing me to mouth swear words like a fish for a second.

"What?" I said finally, rubbing my sides which felt like they'd been hit by a bus.

"Have you seen Vincent?!"

"Um… Not yet… What about him? Not the hair thing is it? C'ause that's _so _old news now…"

"No… You haven't seen him? He's dressed _differently_! It's so cool…"

"Okay, Alice, I need to get to my next class, okay? I'll see him there and report back." I gave a mock salute and hurried into my English classroom.

My alibi to Alice was partially a lie; I was actually very early to class today, but as long as Randal wasn't there, who cared? I started to pull out my last-minute studying and read over it, carefully listening for noises outside the room.

"Oh, no…" I heard Lucrecia's voice in the hallway. "Now it's going to get on my shirt…"

"Wait…" Vincent. "It's just corn syrup and flour, right?"

"Yes… why—Vincent!" She sounded shocked.

"What?" There was a pause. "…It _is_ edible… and now it won't drip onto your shirt…"

A few moments later they both entered the room. Even I was stunned by Vincent's appearance. He was dressed in all clean-cut, loose, black clothes that looked like they were made from a very soft, heavy fabric. The shirt was long sleeved with an open collar. He was wearing a fine black chain with an inverted heart hanging from it. His hair was tied back in a thin red ribbon except for a few locks which fell in front of his eyes.

Vincent grabbed Lucrecia around the waist turned her to face him and kissed her. She pulled away and put her hand over her mouth, as though surprised by something. He laughed and I noticed that there was fake blood dripping out of the side of his mouth. He moved to the back of the class smirking very coolly and observing the room in a godlike fashion.

Despite his cool façade, almost everyone could tell that Vincent was tense. His eyes flicked to the classroom door every so often and he inhaled sharply every time it opened. He looked confident enough, and I knew he had faced much greater danger.

The door opened for the final time and I had to tear my eyes away from Vincent to face the front of the class. Randal's presence caused instant silence, as usual. Her eyes swept sinisterly across the class and by some miracle completely missed Vincent's altered outfit when I dared look back at him I could see his shoulders moving with his breath and his eyes searching subconsciously for a means of escape.

Randal handed out the Mockingbird assessments and continued to ignore Vincent I realized I was watching him again and looked down at the paper. Useless information… author's name, date of publication…

I glanced back at Vincent again. All that stress had to be a detriment to his test score.

Lucrecia caught my eye and gave me a questioning look. I bit my lip and returned sheepishly to my test-taking, not able to resist smirking slightly.

A minute or so later, the usual note-passing session commenced.

"_Seriously though, what is with the outfit?!—Shadow_"

"_I'll repeat myself. Ask Lucrecia. It was not my idea.—Chaos_"

"_Fiiiiiiine…. Hey, Lucrecia, why is Vincent all dressed like that?—Shadow_"

"_It's to make Randal angry. Have Nix explain.—¼ Moon_"

"_'Kay, the outfit is to make Vincent seem like a Vampire. Plan's to give Randal a real heart-attack this time…--Nix_"

I tossed the paper back to Yuffie and gave her a look to not interrupt us anymore.

The following peace was short-lived. Randal finally noticed Vincent and promptly stood to take some action against his appearance. I suddenly remembered how hard these two had butt heads over Vincent's attire earlier this year and wished I had thought to bring popcorn.

"Valentine," Randal hissed, causing Vincent to jump almost a foot in the air. He had finally relaxed only moments before. He soon assumed an air of absolute cool. He looked directly into Randal's eyes and said softly, "Yes, Mrs. Randal?"

She seemed to have been caught off-guard by his icy reaction and took a moment to gather her own response. "Valentine, what is the purpose of this?"

"Of what?"

Randal's eyes narrowed.

Vincent brushed his hair out of his face casually. "I'm sorry. I was under the impression that you wanted me to lose the cape…" He smiled sarcastically. That was when Randal noticed the fake fangs.

I'm sure she was wearing a look of absolute fury but I couldn't see it due to the fact that her face was turned away from me. However, I could see her knuckles turn even whiter than usual on the edge of Vincent's desk.

"Valentine, what is in your mouth?" Or at least I think that's what she said, I couldn't hear her. Vincent wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and it came away apparently bloody.

That was it for Randal. She reached out and tried to grab Vincent by the ear, but his reflexes were quicker than hers. With the back of his wrist he deflected her hand and was three feet away from her as fast as was physically possible without toppling a chair. "Come with me," She hissed and walked towards the door. "Everyone else, continue your test."

Vincent silently put a small folded note onto Lucrecia's desk as he followed Randal out of the room with the air of a dead man walking.

The moment the door clicked shut, I leapt out of my seat and looked over Lucrecia's shoulder at the note.

"_Lucrecia, please don't worry about me. At worst I'll get taken to the principal. You liked him, remember? I am in no danger, but if you don't want to continue… I won't be ashamed of you._

"_I love you, Lucrecia._

_"--Vincent_"

I read the note twice, then looked at Lucrecia trying to figure out what it meant. She had a hand over the side of her neck and was staring into space.

"Lucrecia?" She jumped as though she hadn't realized I was there. "Lucrecia, What's he talking about? How are you involved in this?"

She took her hand away from her neck and stared at the crimson smear on her palm. She was breathing as though she ware nauseous. She looked at me and I saw two perfect fake puncture marks on her neck.

"I'm not going to let him down; I won't back out on this." She sounded more confident than she looked.

"You won't let anyone down. I promise." I looked up at Cloud coldly. He had obviously been watching us.

* * *

My new excuse for the late update: Writing this story is like fixing Vincent's cape. What you see is the nice, smooth, solid, red fabric. Meanwhile I'm trying to Frankenstein-stitch together tiny shreds of some excuse for a plot…


	23. Day 18: Part 2

Day 18: Part 2

* * *

Disclaimer: Don't own FFVII, but I do own all the random crap in my backpack. Unfortunately, I don't own the _rights_ to any of it… -hugs Simba-

* * *

I hadn't realized how truly disorganized my backpack was until now. Of everything in the mess, I was looking for one small object. I pulled out my spiral journal, shook my head, and put it on Lucrecia's desk. Back to looking trough the bag. Science journal? No. Simba doll? Cuddly, but no. Toy lightsaber? Most definitely not. The pile of junk on Lucrecia's desk was growing steadily, and she looked at each object I retrieved with growing worry.

"So _that's_ where my towel is…" I muttered. "Ah! Found it!" I handed Lucrecia a white strip of velvet fashioned into a necklace with two metal rings.

She looked between it and me concernedly.

"It's a choker, collar kind of thing," I clarified, "to cover the marks." I held it out to her.

She shook her head. "After class." She took the collar anyway, she looked scared.

"No freaking out." I warned.

"I am not freaking out!"

"You are too!"

She bit her lip and looked like she was going to cry.

The door opened and I freaked out, trying to get back to my seat and toppling my desk in the process. A few moments later, I was on the floor looking up at Randal's angry face.

"Am I in Hell?" I asked, slightly dazed. I blinked a few times. "Oh, hi, Mrs. Randal," I said, giggling on the adrenaline rush of having almost killed myself. "How's the weather up there?" My giggles became uncontrolled laughter.

"Concussion?" Cloud's voice asked.

"Probably."

"Or she's just crazy."

"We're all mad here!" I said, sitting up and grinning.

"Damn strait…" Cid muttered.

"Silence!" Randal demanded.

"Off with their heads!" I added.

Randal glared down at me. I grinned up at her sheepishly and stood, righting my desk as I did so. I sat down. Without my constant interruptions the class resumed silence.

"Return to your tests," Randal instructed.

I had forgotten that we were even taking a test. In an attempt to make up for lost time I scribbled down answers as quickly as I could. I wrote with a passion, my handwriting slowly regressing into one big, incomprehensible smudge. I had finished half the test when yet another interruption arose.

"Crescent." Randal's voice startled me and I looked over, torn from my previous thoughts. "What is that on your neck?"

Her hand started to reach up to cover the marks again, but she stopped herself. She was shaking badly. "Um…" Lucrecia glanced at where Vincent had been sitting earlier.

"Answer me."

Lucrecia was silent.

"Principal's office, now!" Randal snapped. Lucrecia didn't move.

"But Mrs. Randal! That isn't fair! It's not her fault! She—"

"You too, Brent. Take your things, principal's office, now!"

I glanced to the back of the room. "Should I get—"

"_NOW_!"

I grabbed Vincent's black-and-red messenger-style bag along with my own and dragged the still unmoving Lucrecia along with me. Once we were in the hall and a few rooms away from Randal's she seemed to calm enough to be capable of speech.

"Deer in the headlights, much?" I asked her.

She gave me a look. Good sign. "I'm fine." Denial, bad sign. I rolled my eyes.

"Okay." Lucrecia took a breath. "I'm fine _now_," she said. She had, really, composed herself quite well. Better, in fact, than I could have in the same amount of time. I made a mental note to work on that.

A few moments later we had arrived at the office. "Do you need something?" The receptionist lady asked.

"We are here for disciplinary action from the principal…" The lady looked incredulous. "…According to Randal."

"I see." She believed me now. "We already have one from her room in Rainsford's office. Is she in a particularly bad mood today?"

Lucrecia and I looked at each other. "Yes."

"Go right ahead, Principal Rainsford will be back in a few minutes. She pointed us to his office.

The door was open and inside Vincent was sitting in a desk chair spinning around and around. He looked very relaxed, considering the circumstances.

"Vincent!" He stopped spinning and looked at her, he seemed dizzy. Lucrecia ignored his slightly disoriented state and hugged him around the neck.

"Oh, hello, Lucrecia." He said, dazed, putting an arm around her. "You could have warned—" He stopped. Lucrecia had regressed back to a shaking, crying mess. "What's wrong?" He asked.

When she continued to cry he looked at me questioningly. I shrugged. "Randal yelled at us." I put Vincent's bag down next to him.

"Have you never been yelled at by a teacher before?" Vincent asked her. No response.

Vincent and I made eye-contact. "She's never been yelled at by a teacher before."

Lucrecia glared at me and I realized that I had been looking at Vincent. I stopped.

There was an awkward pause as Lucrecia recovered.

"You seem oddly relaxed about being dressed up like this." I said questioningly to Vincent, more to make conversation than anything.

"Yah… It's probably going to get really old, really fast… but for now, I'm actually enjoying... what has been called the 'Edward Cullen Look'…"

"Accurately named." I said flatly, determinedly looking at the floor.

I could tell from his voice he was smirking. "You think so?"

"Who decided to call it that?" Lucrecia asked almost suspiciously.

"Uh… Stupid, _Twilight_ obsessed chick in my Social Studies class…"

"Not Emily?" I asked, glancing for a second at Vincent, before catching myself and returning my eyes to my fascinating patch of floor.

"Yah, the very same. The girl who's been harassing Sephiroth all year…"

"Oh, her…" Lucrecia seemed to relax.

"What's she been doing to tick off Sephiroth?" I asked.

"Mostly hitting on him… and she's not the only one."

"Really?"

"You seem so surprised."

"Only when considering the fact that the general populous seems to think he's gay…"

In the awkward silence after this statement the principal of our school walked into his office with his usual expression of mild surprise. He wore very dorky, very round glasses that made him look like a balding Harry Potter. He was, however, cleverer and kinder than he looked. "You must be Lucrecia." He nodded to her. "And Nix."

"Hello Mr. Rainsford!" I said, holding up my hand in a gesture translating to "live long and prosper."

"Were you sent by Randal?"

"Yep. Vincent and Lucrecia for…" I glanced at Vincent. "…Vampire-ness… And me for back-talking."

He walked behind his desk. "Should I do something about Mrs. Randal?"

"Fire her?" I suggested, grinning.

Mr. Rainsford shook his head. The bell for the end of class rang. "You three can go. I'll tell Agatha that you served weekend detentions… you don't have to come and—" I was already out the door of the room. "Don't get yourselves in trouble again!"

"No problem!" I shouted back

* * *


	24. Day 19

Day 19

* * *

Disclaimer: Sometimes, I wonder who gave me the right to write this sort of crap. Then I remember that no one did. I hijacked the right to write fan fiction at gunpoint.

* * *

Lately, I had taken to spending time in the library during lunch and, it seemed, I wasn't the only one. "Hey, Lucrecia," I whispered, sitting down across from her. She held up a hand to quiet me, a look of focus on her face. She quickly recited the content for an evidently upcoming math test. I was in a class a year ahead of her so I listened critically. She looked at me for approval and I nodded. "Perfect. So you came in here to study?"

She shrugged. "I'm… kind of getting sick of… everybody…"

I laughed softly. "No kidding."

She had been looking curiously at the book in my hand, so I showed it to her. "D. Grey-Man," I said sheepishly.

"I thought you said the library didn't have good manga…"

"I'm borrowing it from Morgan." I smiled. "If you need any help with that math, tell me."

We both returned to what we had been doing.

* * *

Jake's face had only faint reddish marks across it where Vincent had punched him, but he was still, apparently, very sore about being beaten by Vincent over a girl.

"Hey." He sat next to Lucrecia at the library table, way too close for comfort.

As soon as she'd noticed him she looked down at her work with a determined, stony expression.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked.

Lucrecia didn't move, except for her eyes, which were frantically skimming the room as though searching for a way to escape the situation. "Yes, I'm angry with you." she said quietly.

"Why?"

She pondered her answer for a moment, and then seemed to snap. She turned to him furiously. "If you _need_ to ask, you really should not be talking to me." She stood, turned, and left the library.

I followed as quickly as I could; ready to praise her for her skillful handling of the situation. By the time I caught up with her one of Vincent's arms was around her shoulder and his expression was dangerously angry.

* * *

When I got into the classroom, I approached Lucrecia's desk. I opened my mouth to speak, noticed Vincent in the back of the classroom, realized I was looking at him, looked away, and closed my mouth.

"What?"

I gazed blankly for a moment. "Nobody move… I've lost my train of thought!"

Lucrecia gave me an incredulous look.

"Seriously, I've completely forgotten what I was going to say!"

"Was it about Jake at all?"

"Oh, yah, you totally handled that well."

"You think so?" She asked, disbelieving. "I think it was terrible."

"Well, sure, it was a bad situation but you were—"

Lucrecia held up a hand in my face. "Nix, quit while you're ahead."

I looked at the floor. "Okay…"

I sat down and Randal entered the room.

After the preliminary silencing of the class, Randal addressed us. "Considering the conclusion of the unit on _To Kill a Mockingbird_ we will now proceed to a poetry unit," Collective groan. "The in-class portion of which will be studying the text _Beowulf_."

"_Beowulf_…" I repeated in a low, dark whisper. Lucrecia gave me a weird look, Randal didn't seem to hear me.

"You will also be working on a poetry packet, a collection of forty poems and the reason you chose each. We will also be continuing the study of important grammar points which are commonly misused…"

She proceeded to lecture us on the difference between "sit" and "set."

I was seriously considering attempting to kill Randal. I'm not quite a grammar fanatic, but at least I don't get "rised" and "rose" confused.

The bell saved us, _finally_.

Lucrecia stayed behind while the rest of the class bolted, and worse, she actually approached Randal's desk, presumably to ask a question. I couldn't hear exactly what was going on from where I was outside the door.

"What is she asking?"

I jumped, surprised; Vincent had a tenancy to be very, very quiet when he's standing behind someone.

"Uh… I think she's asking about the test yesterday."

"Damn."

I watched the expression on Randal's face tentatively. She looked very angry, as usual.

"Now might be a good time to go and save her…" I told Vincent.

"Why?"

"Because Randal might _eat_ her if you don't…"

" Yah, good point…" He didn't finish his sentence.

"No, Crescent, it is your own fault that you missed the end of the test. You will not have an opportunity to make it up."

Lucrecia turned to leave the room, her facial expression one of shock. Once out in the hallway she suddenly snapped and began viciously complaining about the whole thing.

"How can she do this? I studied! And she sent me to the office for something that—for all she knows, at least—wasn't even my fault! Does she _want_ us all to fail?"

"Of course she does," I said as we stepped out of the building into the courtyard. Vincent stayed in the shade of the overhang. "She's got a reputation to protect remember?"

"Not giving a student the capacity to achieve a reasonable grade isn't—"

"Heya, Lucrecia?" Jake, of all people was approaching her. I looked around. Vincent had vanished off to somewhere, presumably his next class.

Lucrecia didn't look around but her knuckles were slowly turning white on her binder. "He found out my name?"

"Lucrecia, why won't you talk to—?"

Vincent appeared seemingly from nowhere and grabbed Jake by the back of his shirt. "Hello, Jake."

Once he recognized the voice he stopped struggling completely and his face paled.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I've killed people before now, Jake?" Vincent's voice was a whisper. I could barely hear him. "I would love to kill you right now, but Lucrecia doesn't want me to, so I won't." Vincent released Jake, but he didn't move. "But if she has any reason to want you gone, I _will _kill you."

Jake turned around and saw the seriousness in Vincent's eyes. He fled the scene at full speed.

"He won't bother you again," Vincent said quietly to Lucrecia, putting an arm around her. "And if he does…"

"Vincent, you can't kill him."

"I know… we've had this conversation before. I don't want to _kill _him, I just want him _dead_."

Lucrecia shuddered and Vincent dropped his arm to his side and walked to his next class. She turned and watched him walk off.

I tried to think of a way to lighten her mood a bit. "So… is it cool or not to have guys fighting over you?" I asked.

She looked at me darkly. "Only until one kills the other."

I winced. "Oh… uh, sorry. I didn't mean…"

"It's alright. I was worried about that anyway." She looked sad and scared.

I thought hard, trying to think of a way to console her. "Listen, there's really no danger to anyone this time. I mean, we're in public school; no one is _really_ going to get hurt… Unless Sephiroth goes all Columbine or something…"

She gave me a sharp look and I realized what I'd said.

"… Sorry."

* * *

Author note: Wow, I was tactless in this chapter…  
Figuring out what goes into a chapter: 168+ hours. Typing a chapter: 4 hours. Editing: 2 hours. Finally being able to post it: Priceless~*


	25. Day 20

Day 20

* * *

Disclaimer: My Flash Animation teacher says that our generation doesn't respect idea ownership rights. He says we don't even know how to spell "Copiwrites" anymore.

* * *

"Isn't Vincent _so_ hot now?" Alice asked me.

I sighed, I hated being in denial. "Yes, but you shouldn't be saying that. Do you have any idea how mad Lucrecia already is at you?"

"It's not like she's here or anything."

I glowered. "You know they say that 'the walls have ears', Alice." I was referring to myself, but Alice didn't know that.

"Good thing we're in the middle of the room then."

"You've missed the point, I'm afraid, Liz…" The entire conversation was putting me in a bad mood. Why? Mostly because Vincent and Lucrecia _needed_ to be together, and these external opinions were attempting to drive a wedge between them.

Alice seemed to have tired of talking, and Morgan was not at school today so I was bored enough to tag after Alice on her interminable quest to mooch food off every student in the school.

She bounded out of the cafeteria doors into the courtyard, followed by me and my spiral notebook. Today, I was writing poetry.

"_The lives of the dead eternal intertwined_… hmmm… a little bit too… epic?...…."

"You should write a poem about Vincent."

"This is a poem about Vincent…"

"Really? Hey, look, there he is! Let's go talk to him!" Alice bolted.

"Not a good idea…" I mumbled with my nose still buried in writing my vampyric poetry for the purpose of pissing off Randal. (Gold star for alliteration.)

When I had caught up to her I found Alice chatting away happily at Vincent, oblivious to his stony disinterest and frequent glances in the direction of the library. I assumed that Lucrecia was in the library.

"Have you ever read _Twilight_ Vincent?"

"No. And I don't plan to, thanks."

"Well, everyone's saying that you look like Edward with your hair like that and everything. I don't think so. You're waaaay better looking. I mean, in the book he's _supposed to be_ gorgeous, but in the movie?" Alice made a noise which I cannot accurately replicate using written English.

Vincent gave me a fleeting, pleading look over Alice's shoulder at me. I mimicked Sephiroth's SOLDIER salute by way of acknowledgement and scurried to the library.

* * *

When I got there I found Lucrecia completely absorbed in studying for some unfathomable reason.

I made a noise like opening a radio channel. "Earth to Lucca, come in Lucca." Radio noise again.

"What, Nix?"

Radio crackle. "We have a problem, please report immediately to Earth. Repeat—"

"What is the problem, _Huston_?" She asked sarcastically.

"You'd better see for yourself…"

* * *

A few moments later I was following Lucrecia who was walking faster than I had honestly thought was possible in heels.

Alice was still chatting at Vincent, who had taken a defensive stance now with his arms folded and his eyes focused over her head.

"…but seriously, I don't see what's really so cool about Twilight…"

Vincent noticed us when Lucrecia was a few yards away and Alice noticed his expression of relief and turned just in time for Lucrecia to hit her across the face.

I stopped dead. Alice looked shocked, one hand over the side of her face.

"Great Goddess…" Part of my mind was having trouble comprehending what I had just seen. "That was the craziest thing I've ever _seen_!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lucrecia asked glaring at me.

"You…like, actually slapped someone!" I said. I grabbed her shoulders melodramatically. "We're so proud of you!"

Alice was still standing with her mouth open like a codfish. Vincent was looking at me warily as he carefully took Lucrecia away from me.

"You don't even care that I just got slapped?!" Alice asked.

"No, not particularly, you were asking for it anywaze…"

Everyone was looking at me. I decided that the safest thing for me to do would be to leave the area before someone tried to put me in a spongy room. Again.

* * *

Randal had me hand out the "copies" of Beowulf. Each one consisted of a brightly colored folder—you know the kind you see all over during school sales—and about fifteen pages photocopied out of an English textbook.

When I finished handing everyone copies (nonchalantly giving Cloud the only neon pink colored one) and sat back down at my desk I looked at Lucrecia, worried.

"This isn't Beowulf…" she mouthed.

I held up a hand with my pointer finger and thumb about an inch and a half apart. She nodded.

Randal spoke, interrupting out mute conversation. "This is a highly revised edition of the epic poem _Beowulf_…"

"Beowulf!" I whispered in response.

Randal ignored me. "I believe that based on the level of this class, this edition should be simpler to comprehend for some of you."

Lucrecia looked at me worriedly and I looked back, more angry than anything.

Randal went on to say that she would be reading the poem aloud (yuck) for our benefit. She also said that anyone caught not reading along would be given detention.

I flipped through the little copy of _Beowulf_, trying to find some redemption for the drastically edited translation. Once I had finished skimming I looked over at Lucrecia again. She gave me a significant look and her eyes flicked to Randal. I looked up at the teacher, who had apparently been giving me a very pointed look for the last fifteen seconds. I sheepishly closed the folder and looked up at Randal.

When she felt that she had the class's attention she opened her own copy of _Beowulf_, cleared her throat and began reading the summary of the poem.

I was quickly bored, skimming ahead in the text and preempting every time Randal was about to say "Beowulf." I got out my spiral-bound writing notebook and started doodling.

* * *

Nix says: Sorry, I hate this chapter almost as much as I hate _Twilight_… I'm also sorry for hating on your book, Twilight Fans.

_You know the future of the world is doomed when expressing your opinions on Edward Cullen's hair offends more teenagers than expressing your opinions on politics and religion…_

If you want a glimpse into my state of mind at the moment, find the song "Running out of Ink" by Barenaked Ladies.


	26. Day 21: Part 1

Day 21: Part 1

* * *

Disclaimer: -Holds up sparkly plastic card which says "creative license".-

* * *

"DAMNIT, MORGAN! STOP THROWING COOKIES AT ME!!" I howled, dodging the chocolate-chip projectile so violently that I fell to the floor hard.

I was still brushing cafeteria dust off of my hat when a familiar voice asked, "Is everything alright over here?"

"Yes," I sighed. "That is if you call being perpetually bombarded with a seemingly infinite number of cookies 'alright'." I glowered at the offending tablemates and returned to the more interesting conversation.

"I think I've seen worse."

"Ahem… uh. Anyway…" She smiled at my attempt to change the subject quickly off of her tragic past. "Anyhow… is there a particular reason you're over here, Lucrecia?"

"Yes, actually…" She handed me a badly folded note, rolling her eyes. "This. And basically everyone else in the class agrees…"

I took the note and read it quickly. It basically said that I was required to come help all of them with homework. It was in Cloud's handwriting and it was laconic and rude.

Lucrecia had re-read the note over my shoulder and gave it a disapproving glare as though the very paper itself had personally offended her. "Everyone else was much more polite…"

"Who else… er… requested my presence?"

She shrugged. "Yuffie, Aerith… most everyone to some degree. Nanaki wants to meet you."

"Nanaki?"

"Yes. The others call him 'Red XIII'. We're saying he's our dog."

"I'm sure he appreciates that."

"Oh, he doesn't…"

I looked at the note again. "Sounds like a disaster beyond my imagination will occur if I decline to acquiesce to his request…"

Lucrecia gave me a sidewise look.

I looked back, equally sideways. "If you didn't understand that you need to be filmically educated…"

She rolled her eyes and started to walk away.

"I'll come if I can!" I shouted after her, "Tell Cloudy that!"

She turned around and waved, then put a hand over her mouth to cover her laughter as a cookie in a sandwich bag hit me on the side of the head.

"Morgan!"

* * *

"Nix, how did you get away with that yesterday?" Lucrecia asked.

"With what?"

"Writing in your notebook while you were supposed to be reading."

"I could get away with it because… I'm just awesome!"

Lucrecia looked at me disbelievingly.

"Okay, I have no clue how I got away with it… Maybe Randal's given up on me?"

"I doubt it… But either way, I wouldn't do it again…"

"Are you kidding?! I'd much rather be drawing than listening to that bull—"

"NIX!"

The door opened and Randal entered with her usual dark, sweeping grace that made her look like she should be wearing Batman's cape. She dove immediately into reading _Beowulf_. Unfortunately, she was about a page and a half behind where we were yesterday. I raised my hand. Randal stopped talking. Several people who had already fallen asleep from the drone of Randal's scratchy voice woke up again, looking around for the source of the interruption. Randal stared at me. I stared back, silently, hand raised.

"What is it, Brent?"

"We're past that part, Mrs. Randal."

"What?"

"We're past that part. We were at the part where Beowulf is going to kill Grendal's mother. We're past the part where they're arm-wrestling."

"They were not arm-wrestling, Brent."

"Sounded like it. Beo ripped Grendal's arm right off, didn't he?" I shivered exaggeratedly. "Positively brutal. I love it."

Randal stared at me. Instead of responding she flipped backwards a few pages in the packet and resumed reading the exposition about Grendal's numerous attacks on Hearot.

I grinned sidewise at Lucrecia and tossed her a note.

"_Evil plan success rate for today: 100%. Let's hope I can support the track record…_"

"_Wait, you wanted her to go back?_"

"_So it would drag on longer, yeah. I also needed to prove that I was paying attention._"

"_But… you told her that we'd already gone back too far…_"

"_Exactly, reverse psychology!_"

Lucrecia rolled her eyes at me and kept the note.

"Beowulf…" I resumed my annoying echoing and wrote in my spiral notebook despite Lucrecia's dark look in my direction…

* * *

On any other day I might have stayed packing my stuff up late in my last class, but today, I bolted out of the school.

In fact I bolted so fast that I almost tripped over Yuffie.

"Hi Yuffie!"

"Heya, Nix!"

Several of the others glanced at me, but very few took any notice.

I looked around. "Where's…?" I asked

Cloud shrugged, uncaring. "I don't know."

Sephiroth, Vincent and Lucrecia were missing from the group. Cid was in detention again. I shrugged and fell into step with Yuffie.

"Sephiroth doesn't go anywhere near Cloud—or any of us—when he can help it," she whispered, "Never talks to anyone either." She tilted her head to the side. "'Cept Red XIII… And you."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"You never noticed that he'll still string together more than two words around you?"

"No, what I didn't notice is that he won't talk to anyone else… that explains a lot…"

"Well, apparently he talks to Red XIII."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Don't know much, do you?"

She punched me, but it didn't hurt too badly and I deserved it.

We took the turn I had been forbidden by Sephiroth to pass without his permission. I stopped for a second, wondering if he was one of the "basically everyone else in the class" Lucrecia had mentioned. This slightly dark wondering was stopped and immediately replace d by awe when the house came into view.

I'm sorry, did I say "house"? I meant _"mansion"_.

The place was big and unnecessarily grand, despite being run down, and hauntingly Victorian. I felt like there would be an ongoing murder investigation inside, but (disappointingly) there wasn't. The gargoyles leering down from the third floor roof slightly spooked even me. All the windows on the first floor had been boarded up. Some of the boards looked newer, like they'd been added recently.

The oddest aspect of the house, however, was sleeping on the front porch. When the group walked up it lifted its head and yawned. I recognized the swishing, flame-ended tail, the ornate patterns of darkened fur, and the "XIII" tattoo. He jolted and stood up immediately upon seeing me. "What is she doing— I mean… uh… woof?" Red XIII looked sheepish and was hiding the flame-end of his tail under a large puppy-like paw.

"It's okay, Nanaki, I know who you are and I know you can talk."

Nanaki's shoulders relaxed only slightly. "You are Nix?" He asked. I nodded. "So… It is you then." The expression Nanaki's bright eye was unfathomable. "I thought I might never get a chance to meet you… with how territorial this lot was acting…"

"You wanted to meet me?"

He smiled. It was a very human action which looked odd on his animal snout. "It was impossible to suppress curiosity. I hear of your exploits daily. I wanted to meet the genius who had the idea to put _Dancing Mad_ on Sephiroth's music…

"Speaking of whom… he's late again…"

"You're surprised?"

"I just want to know what he's doing."

"Avoiding Cloud."

"That's all?"

"It would seem…"

Nanaki led me in the doors of the house. We were the last ones to enter, everyone else having gone on ahead, bored by the conversation about Sephiroth.

The tiled floor of the main hall was scuffed and cracked in places, like hard heavy things had fallen from the three wrought iron balconies. There was a grand staircase in the center made of polished marble, but that was cracked too.

"How'd you guys end up with a place like this?"

"They _found_ it." Nanaki told me, still standing at my side. "We've been trying to find out who owns it… using the computer Reeve made… But according to all credible information the place doesn't exist."

"… according to all credible information _you_ don't exist…"

"True enough…"

I was in awe of the building. I barely listened to Nanaki's tour.

"…nobody really goes up to the upper floors anymore… Cid's still working on the heating systems… We salvaged most of the furniture from up there… and parts for Reeve's super-computer… It's a PC graveyard up there…"

"So this is where computers come to die…"

"Cait refuses to go in that room…"

"Seriously?"

"Claims it's spooky."

"That's… really funny, actually."

* * *

Author Says: Nix is out of school!! This could be a good or bad thing for Nix's story because 1) Nix has more time but 2) Nix has no evil English teacher. Oh well, nix will continue to write to the best of Nix's ability. Nix will stop speaking in the third person now…

Sorry about the awkward chapter end, I guess...


	27. Day 21: Part 2

Day 21: Part 2

* * *

WARNING: This disclaimer may not actually disclaim anything.

* * *

I was still entranced by the ornate building I had been ushered into, looking around the high-ceilinged entrance hall, worn tapestries almost invisible several floors above.

I was distracted, however when the large front door opened and Sephiroth slipped in sulkily. He closed the door behind him.

"Hey, Sephiroth!" I said, but my smile faltered when I saw his face. He seemed paler even than usual, or perhaps it was just his darkened, hollowed eye sockets contrasting against his vivid eyes. He looked thinner too, and sad.

He returned my greeting with a cool nod, slipped as quickly as possible past me and took every other step up the grand staircase.

I watched the end of his hair disappear down a hallway, more worried now.

"Isn't it cold up there?" I asked Nanaki.

"Yes… however, he doesn't seem to mind it…" he responded, looking after Sephiroth sadly.

"Is he okay?" I asked.

Nanaki sat down and shook his head sadly. "We do not know…"

"'We'?"

"Lucrecia, Aerith and I. We're worried about his mental state…"

"With good reason, I take it?" I looked at Nanaki almost teasingly.

"Not precisely… It is how Cloud has been behaving that worries us…"

"Cloud. I see… He's doing that say-every-mean-thing-you-can-think-of thing again? 'Cause if he is, I'll _personally_ teach him a lesson…" I rubbed my knuckles, only managing to crack one.

Nanaki looked up at me incredulously. "I'm sorry, but I doubt that, Nix."

"In a battle of words and wits… 'brain over brawn'."

"I'd like to see that. What did you mean by 'again', you implied that you've seen Cloud at his attack personally…?"

"Yeah, I think it started one day during class. Cloud was all like…" I held up a hand as though I had a sock puppet. I added a deep, sulky aspect to my voice.

"'You're making Randal yell at us!'" Sock-puppet-Cloud said.

"But we're _trying _to make Randal angry, choco-butt."

"'Maybe you should shut up, Nix!'"

"Well, maybe you're just stinky."

Nanaki was staring at me.

"It happened exactly like that."

"Sure…"

"With those exact sound effects."

* * *

I was evidently not needed for help with homework (the liars), so spent my time poking around dark corners of the room, against Cloud's advice. He said there was "all sorts of nasty stuff" in the area outside the pool of firelight, but all I found was a rat skeleton. The main room was a sort of mountain of half-rotten furniture in a little semi-circle around a bonfire. The fire was controlled by a ring of ice being regularly refreshed by Nanaki and his ice materia.

My boredom eventually took precedence over my sense of self-preservation and I slipped out of the main room and onto the upper floor…

* * *

"Damsel hiding in the dragon's keep?"

"Shut up, Nix!!" Sephiroth said, slamming the pencil he'd been using onto the desk. "I get enough of that kind of shit from Cloud!"

"Hey, there is a difference between teasing and harassing."

He rolled his eyes and went back to his work.

"Bit gloomy up here, isn't it?" The walls were a faded grey Victorian flower print and the crown molding was all black. There were tacks in the wall, but no posters or photos. The window was small and looked out over a part of the surrounding forest. If I stood on my toes I could see a perfect ring of seven trees with an oddly scuffed grassy clearing in the center. It was so cold in the room that I could see my own breath. Sephiroth, however wasn't even wearing his leather coat, instead he was just wearing the black tee-shirt he used to cover his chest for the dress code.

"I know!" I said, grabbing a piece of his paper and a sharpie. I drew a large smiley face on it and tacked it to the wall. I took a step back, admiring my handiwork for a second, then nodded. "Much better."

He ignored me. "Nix, get out of here."

"I was wondering if you needed help with math…" I looked over his shoulder. "You're in _pre-algebra_?" I asked Sephiroth incredulously, looking at the worksheet. "I'm in _pre-trigonometry_!"

"Whatever…" He moved his arm so I couldn't see the paper.

I sighed. "Come downstairs if you need my help."

"With Cloud down there? Yeah, right."

"Don't worry about that, I have a plan." I started to leave the room.

"… What is the plan?"

I grinned, my back still facing Sephiroth. "Live bait."

* * *

"Tell me you didn't actually make that mistake." I said, pointing at his paper with a grimace. I put on a dignified, deep voice. "'Even in this quadrant of the galaxy, two plus two still equals four.'"

"It's not 'two plus two'!" He took the paper from me. Sephiroth had taken a seat behind an ugly bluish armchair and I was sitting precariously on the back of it.

"Yah, 'X minus two equals four' is a _lot_ harder!" I snarled sarcastically.

"It is though!"

I put my face in one hand.

"What?"

"You're hopeless."

"You're lucky Lucrecia's not here…" Cloud said, not looking up from his _Beowulf_ assignment.

"Am I now?"

"If she were here, she'd probably hit you…" Cloud was smirking. Sephiroth was giving him a dark look.

One of the double doors creaked slightly, then stopped. I jumped up from the floor and looked into the hall. "Hi, Lucrecia, Vincent! I was wondering where you were…"

"I told you they'd miss us if we showed up late!" Lucrecia hissed at him.

"But was it worth it?" Vincent asked in her ear.

I looked at Lucrecia curiously.

"Not a chance, Nix."

I rolled my eyes and withdrew back into the main room. Lucrecia and Vincent followed me.

I sat back down on the armchair looking over Sephiroth's shoulder at the math.

"You have no honest clue what you're doing, do you?"

"I know exactly what I'm doing."

"Yeah, guessing…"

Sephiroth glared at me. "It'll work. I'll just get the right answers off someone during class."

"But you'll have to know what you're doing for the test!"

Sephiroth was silent, sketching in an immaculate "5" for the next answer.

"That's wrong, Sephiroth."

He turned to me, glowering, "fine, you do it if you're so smart."

I copied down the problem and wrote out the step-by-step algebraic work. Sephiroth was staring at it like he wanted to say he understood it, but something was conflicting.

I gave him a shrewd sidewise look. "… which math teacher do you have?"

"… Martinez…"

"That explains a lot… okay. Martinez is the worst teacher I have ever had… not that she's not nice and very funny… she just doesn't _teach_…" I flipped to a new page in my notebook. "Okay, forget everything you know about math…" I drew a large _X _on the blank page. "This is _X_."

Sephiroth stared at me blankly.

"_X_ is magical…"

"Nix!"

"Okay, okay… so Martinez just throws you this symbol you've never heard of… I'll explain it. _X_ is a placeholder. Any number that should be where _X_ is… that's the value of _X_."

"Oh…" Sephiroth looked at his paper again he erased the guess answers and started writing in correct ones. My faith in his mental ability was restored when he correctly analyzed a two-variable, seventeen-step equation mentally.

I stood to find that Yuffie was pathetically raising her hand. "Will you help me with my math, Professor Nix?"

I laughed and started across the room, however, the journey was tainted by everyone staring at me.

"They don't teach algebra in ninja school?"

Yuffie rolled her eyes, "Math is stupid."

"Oh, really?"

"Oh, no…" I heard Lucrecia whisper.

I launched into a rant about the uses of trigonometry in being a ninja. I thought it was a nice speech, but no one was paying any attention to me except for Lucrecia.

"You really like math, don't you?" She said while I was mid-breath.

"Love-hate relationship kind of a thing, you know?"

"I think I know…"

Noticing that I had no audience, I yawned and lay back on one of the couches, my own homework propped on my bent knees. Before I could even reread the instructions on the Beowulf assignment though, one of the double-doors banged open and I guessed that another one of the missing characters. I dashed back out into the main hall to see who it was.

Cid Highwind was framed by the bright light outside and looked particularly crabby.

"Detention?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Kilt Man?"

"Yeah."

"Damn."

The laconic conversation was stopped, however, when Cait Sith tumbled down the main staircase. "Hey, Cid!" Cait shouted, jumping up and down on the third step, waiving. "I think I found the problem in the heatin' system!" He bounded up the stairs plunkily, followed by Cid, who was already lighting his second cigarette and a moment later by Reeve and, surprisingly, Lucrecia.

"Cid, do not smoke inside!"

"Quit bossing me around, woman!"

"Cid!—" He was gone, so Lucrecia followed him up the stairs. She was surprisingly efficient considering her high-heeled shoes.

I looked at Reeve in surprise. "Holy shit… She's like that to everyone?"

"Don't let her hear you say that…"

When I returned to the main room Cloud and Sephiroth were both standing, glaring at each other over the flames in the center of the room. From the looks on their faces Cloud was Getting on Sephiroth's case again.

I leaned against the doorframe casually. "Cloud Strife, SOLDIER 1st class, eh?" I shook my head, "reduced to the like of picking on other kids like a puffed-up third-grader…"

Cloud looked away from Sephiroth to look at me. I slunk back to my couch and returned my eyes to my homework. Arguing is like gambling: big risks and a poker face.

"What did you say?"

"Oh, apologies. I misspoke." Cloud looked at me quizzically, I didn't look up. "You were never in SOLDIER, were you? No, that was Zack Fair, wasn't it?"

Cloud made his stupid look, arms and shoulders jerking back slightly in surprise. He recomposed himself and crossed his arms angrily. "What do you want, Nix?"

"I want you to shut up and quit dragging me down."

"You think this involves you? Nose out, Nicole."

"So be it." I whispered.

My interruption seemed to have busted up Cloud's rhythm. He glared darkly at Sephiroth, but didn't seem to be able to think of anything else good to say. "You even look stupid…" Cloud muttered, sitting on the couch that was as far away from Sephiroth as possible.

"Don't even try that one, Strife."

"Nix, shut up!"

"Seriously, if I were you, I would not even try to play the 'looks like a woman' card." Sephiroth gave me the indignant look that time.

"Nix…"

"Your funeral…"

Cloud stared at me for a good fifteen seconds, enough time for Lucrecia to have returned to the room she was looking warily between myself and Cloud.

"Alright, why don't I want to do that?" He finally retorted.

"… At least Sephiroth never wore a dress…" I stared straight at Cloud without smiling until his face turned slightly pink.

Aerith was looking at the floor guiltily and Tifa was glaring at me. Everyone else was looking at Cloud with varying degrees of incredulity or disgust.

"And Cloud… _has_ worn a dress?" Vincent asked in a voice which clearly stated that Vincent had lost all respect for Cloud.

Cloud didn't answer and so I did for him. "Yah, it was purple and froofy and very cute. It had a big, red bow in the back. It was so cute especially with his _curly, blonde wig_ and his pretty red bows tied in his hair… Wasn't he cute, Aerith?" She didn't respond. "Well, at least Don Corneo thought he was cute…" Everyone who recognized the name cringed, especially Aerith. I opened my mouth to continue my fangirl-toned rant, but Cloud cut me off.

"Drop it, Nix…"

"Quit harassing Sephiroth, Cloudy."

"Nix…"

"At least I haven't announced it over the intercom at school… yet."

"Are you blackmailing me?"

"Yes." Cloud's face was even redder now, but with controlled fury rather than embarrassment.

I turned on my heel and left the room coolly. No one followed me immediately, but Lucrecia met me in the hall. She had my backpack.

"Thanks." I said, shakily.

"I guessed that you'd need that… Are you alright?"

"What, me? Yeah, I'm okay…"

"… Nix, would you really do that to Cloud? Blackmail him?"

"Well, I did, didn't I?"

"… Do you hate Cloud?" She asked, not looking at me.

I slung the backpack over my shoulder. "'Hate' is an awfully strong word, isn't it?" I turned with a wave and began the walk towards my own home.

The question about hating Cloud bugged me. No, I didn't hate Cloud. There was only one, okay maybe there were two, people I disliked enough to truly 'hate'.

My thought process eventually brought me to a pleasant image involving one of the hated people and C-4. Oh, and high-heeled shoes.

* * *

Author Note: I'm sorry, this project is being tossed aside like an old glove this summer, so to speak… I've been taking care of my own babies instead of babysitting Square Enix's. Though, considering who the characters are whom I just called "babies", that's a little creepy… Indeed…


	28. Day 22

Day 22

* * *

I don't think I even own my soul anymore.

* * *

I turned around moments after buying a cheese stick for my lunch and was ambushed by Lucrecia. "Nix, don't blackmail Cloud."

I blinked in surprise at the sudden accusation. "Why not?"

"Because it's illegal. You could get into trouble…"

I rolled my eyes and headed out of the cafeteria "Me, trouble? Naw."

"Nix!"

I turned to look directly at her. "Lucrecia, there's nothing I can do. The blackmail is done. And so is the follow-through… technically."

Lucrecia looked at me quizzically.

"Truthfully… well, about half the school knows about Cloud's pretty, purple dress already… And now that _Yuffie_ knows…"

"So… it was an empty threat?"

"Yes, exactly, and therefore not blackmail." I smiled.

"You could still get into trouble, though…"

I shrugged and continued eating my cheese and looking for a new topic to talk about. "So how's Vincent dealing with that newfound fame of his?"

Lucrecia glared across the courtyard to where Vincent's fledgling fan club was chattering away. I laughed. "I see you're not too pleased with it…"

A girl screamed.

The immediate reaction of the entire courtyard was to look for the source of the commotion.

As I turned I could feel the world around me beginning to move in slow-motion, like in some hyped-up action movie.

When I saw the source of the commotion I felt like I was watching the end of Advent Children, minus the badass swords.

Sephiroth looked like a monster. He was physically superior to Cloud, who was thrown against the courtyard's stairs too hard for any normal person to survive. Sephiroth dove in for another attack, this time lifting Cloud off the ground with his right hand and hitting him with his left. The most frightening thing was the fact that his eyes showed no emotion at all. This was Sephiroth: SOLDIER, 1st class. Sephiroth, defending himself.

"Sephiroth!"

I was well trained never to step in between the fighting parties in a cat or dog fight. Lucrecia was obviously not. She stepped in front of Sephiroth and put her hands on his shoulders.

"Sephiroth…"

He wasn't looking at her. He was looking over her shoulder at Cloud, who was still laying on the steps.

"You okay?" I asked him.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess…" He groaned and sat up.

"Sephiroth…" The cold and all too familiar voice immediately silenced a panicked and rowdy crowd.

"Brent, Crescent. To the principal's office, now." She glared at us. "Strife, the nurse's office."

Tifa took over taking care of Cloud. Sephiroth was glaring at Randal like he wanted to attack her too.

Lucrecia put a hand on Sephiroth's shoulder trying to guide him away from the place where Cloud had been lying. Sephiroth's eyes didn't leave Randal's until she was out of sight.

"You have the right to remain silent…"

We told the office staff that we were here to See Mr. Rainsford

"Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law…"

When we entered the office Sephiroth didn't move, eyes focused on the window.

"You have a right to an attorney…—"

"Nix."

"Sorry…"

Sephiroth's eyes flicked to Lucrecia for a moment. She took her hand off his arm and he looked back at the window.

"Sephiroth, what were you thinking?" Lucrecia asked her voice quiet.

"I wasn't…" Sephiroth responded.

There was silence for a moment.

"What did Cloud say to you?"

Sephiroth stood like a statue and the subject was dropped.

"Why?"

Sephiroth's head turned a fraction to look at her.

"Why won't you speak to me?"

He looked back at the window.

I sat down on a desk to the side of the classroom, trying to stay out of the line of fire.

"What are you afraid of?"

"It's my fault." He said finally. "It's my fault we're here, and everyone hates me for it."

"Sephiroth, what you did destroyed the Jenova cells from your body and mine… Do you understand the implications of that?"

Sephiroth opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but immediately focused on impersonating a statue again when the door opened.

Mr. Rainsford entered the classroom authoritatively. He observed the frozen attitudes in the room for a moment before Lucrecia moved to sit next to me.

"What happened, Sephiroth?"

Sephiroth didn't move.

"Mr. Rainsford, it wasn't his fault, he was provoked, Cloud started it!" I blurted quickly. Lucrecia stared at me.

"You witnessed it happen? The entire event?"

"Yeah, we were both right there." I could feel Sephiroth looking at me, but I dared not make eye contact. The words _"I was right next to you, Bella…"_ were ringing through my head.

"What did Cloud say?"

"He said…" I looked at Lucrecia, then at Sephiroth, who was ignoring me. "He was all 'Your bad at math and you look stupid', you know, just anything to make him mad."

Sephiroth's face twitched slightly.

"It isn't the first time Cloud has done this either…" Lucrecia added.

Mr. Rainsford tried to get Sephiroth to speak in vain, then , with a little more evidence from us we were released. Mr. Rainsford assigned Sephiroth and Cloud Saturday detention, saying that he would deal with them further then.

"Bright side!" I said, cheerily as Lucrecia left the room. "Now we don't have to go English!"

Lucrecia laughed softly and Sephiroth started to leave as well, but turned to me.

"Nix…"

"Uh…yeah?"

"Do people really think I look like a woman?" I bit my lip, not sure what to say. Sephiroth's expression immediately darkened. "Thanks, thanks a lot, Nix." He turned and left.

"Hey, if you even _think_ about cutting your hair I will hurt you with a pointy object!"

"I wasn't going to, Nix!"

"Good!!"

I turned around to face Mr. Rainsford again.

"Yes, Nicole?"

"Mr. Rainsford, I had a question."

"Fire away."

"Why is our English class so small?"

"Oh, right _that_ class… You are aware that our English department is overcrowded and understaffed? That is why we couldn't add the other students to various other classes as we did with other subjects. So we created a new one during one of Randal's free periods."

"So that's why she always leaves to go get coffee… I also have one other little question…"

"Yes?"

"Can I go check if Cloud's okay… instead of going back to class?"

"If you dare, go ahead."

* * *

"Heya, Cloud."

Cloud was laying on one of the uncomfortable cots that were set up in the nurse's office. "What the hell do you want, Nix?" He snarled.

"Can't I just be here to see if you're okay?"

"No."

"Nix, seriously." Tifa was sitting next to Cloud, a hand on his shoulder, presumably to discourage him from sitting up.

I sighed. "Okay, fine. I'm here for two reasons, one, to actually see if you're okay. 'Cause if you weren't Lucrecia was gonna ground Sephiroth 'til end of senior year. And two… What did you say to make him so mad, Cloud?"

He didn't respond.

"What did you say Cloud?" Tifa encouraged, sounding almost curious.

Cloud didn't make eye contact with me. "I told him that he's a coward… hiding behind a moronic brat and his idiotic mother…"

I stared at him for a moment in disbelief. "I have just lost all sympathy for you." Cloud rolled his eyes. "Saying that about Lucrecia… Hell, I'm ready to take a swing at you!"

Cloud and Tifa were both staring at me with expressions close to disbelief.

"I think I know a good saying for you right now, Cloud…" I took a deep breath and recited,"_'__Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus__.'_"

"And that means…?"

I looked at the ground sheepishly. "… 'Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon'…"

"Nix, get out. Now."

Tifa and Cloud were both giving me the evil eye, so I left, but not before turning back to Cloud to shout, "By the way, you have Saturday detention this weekend!"

* * *

Author Note: Let's see… nope. I have nothing of value to say here, so have a nice day!


	29. Day 23

Day 23

* * *

Disclaimer: I should honestly start actually disclaiming stuff again, shouldn't I? Okay, FFVII characters do not belong to me, nor do real people. Except for Nix. I think Nix is me. I'm not sure anymore though…

* * *

"Where were you yesterday? Why didn't you come back to English?"

"I was checking to see if Cloud was okay."

Lucrecia looked at me suspiciously. "And was he okay?"

"Okay enough to get really pissed at me."

"Why?"

"'Cause I asked him how he pissed off Sephiroth."

"Would you stop saying that?"

"Sorry…"

* * *

My poetry project was finally complete, artistry and all. Forty poems were required, I had forty-five. Four of them were from the first Harry Potter book.

"I didn't know there was even poetry in that book." Vincent said with a slightly disgusted look.

Five poems had been taken from _Through the Looking Glass_.

"Are you sure Randal won't have a problem with that? It _is_ a children's book after all…" Lucrecia asked, concerned.

Several of the "poems" were actually song lyrics. One of the songs was _One-Winged Angel_.

"I'm almost honored…" Sephiroth commented, looking at the illustration for the page, a pencil sketch which was designed to infinitely glorify his image.

One of the required poems for the project was a sonnet, written by the project author. My sonnet was titled _Randal_.

"BRENT!" The worksheet on _Beowulf_ was boring me, anyhow.

"Yes, Mrs. Randal?"

"What is the meaning of this?!"

"To annoy you, of course Mrs. Randal."

"What?"

"May I sit down now, Mrs. Randal?"

"Absolutely not!"

* * *

Five minutes later I was in Mr. Rainsford's office asking him to read my sonnet and see if he saw anything wrong with it. He didn't so I went back to class. When I got there there was a note on my desk.

"_You are an idiot._"

"_I know._"

"_That's all you have to say for yourself?_"

"_Yeah, pretty much…_"

"_Nix, you could have gotten yourself in huge trouble. At risk of repeating myself, that was a stupid thing to do. It's just going to make Randal hate you and not help your little vendetta against her._"

"_I'm sooooo not in the following authority mood today. And that includes you, Lucca._"

She just shook her head and didn't write back.

Randal was announcing that we would be starting a Shakespeare works unit.

"What?! You're telling me we're still not done with poetry?!" Yuffie complained. Her shout broke the "no talking" rule and then burst forth a tidal wave of chatter.

"You ani't gonna make me read that crap!"

"This is unfair." Tifa said indignantly.

"'Unfair'? Don't you talk to me 'bout 'unfair'!" Cid shouted back at her.

"_Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene…_" I began to chant, looking at Lucrecia who was glaring around at the pandemonium.

"Nix, this is stupid. Why'd you have to make this unit drag on so long?!" Cloud snapped at me.

"_From ancient grudge break to new mutiny…_"

"So now Nix is your scapegoat?" Sephiroth retorted.

"_Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean…_"

Lucrecia sensed danger and stood up to try to help. "Both of you! Stop it!" They ignored her.

"_From forth the fatal loins of these two foes…_"

"Why do you still hate me, Cloud?" Sephiroth asked. Cloud glowered.

"_A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life…_"

"What's going on, I'm confused!!?" Yuffie shouted, waving her hands in the air.

"_Who's misadventured and piteous overthrows…_"

Aerith moved to sand next to Lucrecia. "Sephiroth, Cloud, please stop it."

"_Do with their death bury their parent's strife…_"

"What?" Cloud asked. Evidently, it took a lot of concentration for Cloud to be angry, because this minor distraction was enough to break the quickly darkening mood.

"_The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love and the continuance of their parent's rage, which but their children's end naught could remove…_"

"Back to your seats. Now." Randal snarled. I was the only person still sitting. The rest of the class obeyed with some minor grumbling.

"_Is now the two hour's traffic of our stage; the which if you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss our toil shall strive to mend!_"

Even Randal was staring at me blankly.

"What?"

"That will do, Brent… The Shakespeare work you will be studying will be _The Tragedy of Julius Caesar_…"

I raised my hand.

"Brent?"

"But Mark Antony's a jerk in _Julius Caesar_. Can't we read _Antony and Cleopatra_? He's nicer in that one."

"No."

"_Romeo and Juliet_?"

"No."

"Not even _A Midsummer's Night Dream_?"

"No. You will first be reading this, however."

"This" was a thick packet of papers. I held my hand out for them before Randal even said my name again.

* * *

Lucrecia caught up with me during passing period.

"Nix, you're supposed to come to the house again today."

"Who says?"

"Cloud."

"Why?"

"Because—he claims—he read the packet and doesn't understand it. I think he hasn't read it…"

"Obviously. I'll be there. I understand this packet fine…"

"By the way, Nix… Have you read all Shakespeare's plays?"

"No, actually, I've only read Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. The rest that I know I saw on stage. I adored Macbeth. All that blood…"

* * *

I was scratching the back of my head, re-skimming the day's assigned reading, titled "Who wrote Shakespeare?" The rest of my English class plus Nanaki was assembled in front of me, sitting on one of the sofas, or on the ground in the case of the less-privileged.

"'Kay." I said, clearing my throat, prepping to read the article title aloud, "So, 'Who Wrote Shakespeare?'"

Yuffie raised her hand suddenly, eyes bright. "I know! Oh, oh, pick me!"

"Shakespeare…" Cloud said, giving Yuffie a sidewise look.

Yuffie lowered her hand looking very dejected.

There was an awkward pause, then I suddenly pointed to Yuffie. "…Yuffie! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?!"

"Ummm…" She bit her lip. "Grant?"

"Good job Yuffie, right answer. Cloud? Wrong."

"Whaaaat?!"

I smirked and began to paraphrase the article by way of an answer. "Right, so, apparently a bunch of conspiracy theorists decided that, since he can't spell his own name, Shakespeare was illiterate. (Honestly though, who can blame him? _I_ can't spell his name and _I'm _literate.) Anyhow, A lot of people think that English Dignitaries wrote the plays and poems we accredit to Shakespeare. Some think the queen wrote them, some people think that this guy called the Earl of Oxford wrote them. I think it was Sir Francis Bacon, 'cause his name is cool."

Lucrecia raised her hand.

I stared at her for a moment, then realized why she had her hand in the air. "Lucrecia?"

"What's your _real_ opinion Nix?"

"I think…" I stopped to formulate a clever answer. "I think that this is bull, and we shouldn't have to study it. I declare this the end of English 2.0. I've told you what you need to know, if you want more detail, read the article yourselves or I'll start telling people _you're_ illiterate…"

* * *

Author note: Special thanks to my grade 9 English teacher who had me memorize the prologue to _Romeo and Juliet_. (That way, I didn't even have to look it up to put it in this story!) This was my awesome English teacher, by the way, not the horrible one.

I'm also sorry that my chapters are getting a bit ramble-y. I'm getting a little bored, and my newest muse is a little grumpy that he's not in the story, but I'm determined to see this through to the end! I promise!


	30. Day 24

Day 24

* * *

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy. The new character in this chapter is an original character that I created for something else, and I decided it would be cool to cameo him. (And if you steal my characters I will be _angry_.)

* * *

My jaw dropped open when I walked into the classroom. Randal was not in the room, which was usual, however the shocking fact was, there was a man behind her desk. The board said "Mr. Val" so I assumed he was a substitute teacher, but I asked anyway. "Are you the sub?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact!" He pointed rather self-satisfied-ly at his name written on the blackboard.

I had the sudden impulse to run up and give him a hug. I resisted, however, sufficing to run out of the classroom, announce, "Randal's gone! We've got a sub!" to the students outside, bolt back into the room, and sit down with my hands folded on my desk, smiling like a maniac. Mr. Val looked at me curiously.

Lucrecia looked into the room cautiously. "Oh, hello." She said, nodding to the sub.

He waved back in a befuddledly robotic manner.

"Oh, no," Vincent said, upon seeing Mr. Val. "Not another absolute maniac… no…" He started to turn around and leave the classroom, but Lucrecia grabbed his arm.

"I'm not going to let you cut class again."

"When did I cut class before?" Vincent asked innocently. Lucrecia looked at him sternly. Vincent looked sheepish. "You heard about that…?"

I followed as she dragged him to his seat at the back of the class. "Val may be a maniac," I told Vincent defensively, "but he's a nice maniac. Usually."

Vincent looked ill-comforted. "How d'you know? You just met him…"

"So'd you." I pointed out.

Vincent rolled his eyes and sat down at his desk mildly dejectedly.

I stuck my tongue out at him and sat down in my desk in the corner.

Mr. Val cleared his throat and looked around at us. "Uh… is everyone here? Uh… If you're not here raise your hand."

I raised my hand.

"You're lying." Mr. Val said, confused, "You _are _here." He looked at me suspiciously, "Aren't you?"

"Uh…. Yeah. But if they're not here they can't raise their hand to say that they're not here."

Val pondered this.

"You're new at this 'teaching' thing, aren't you…?"

He glared at me with one eye squinted up much smaller than the other. "So _is_ everyone here, since you're so _clever!"_

I looked around. "One person's missing." Everyone looked at each other, mildly confused.

"Who?" Val asked.

"Randal."

There was a grumbling "that was _so_ not funny" coming from everyone behind me.

Val looked at the note from Randal he was holding. "Uh... so. Randal says we need to do work."

I raised my hand.

"Yes, miss?"

"Do we have to?"

"What do you propose we do instead?"

"Uh..."

"My point precisely!"

He looked back at the paper again.

I raised my hand again.

"Yes, miss?"

"How long is Randal going to be gone?"

Mr. Val put a finger to his mouth, thinking. "Today."

I looked at him in disbelief.

"What?" he asked, sounding mildly disgruntled, "Sick of me already?"

"No! Val! Please, don't leave us! Don't leave us with Randal!"

"Is your 'Randal' teacher really that bad?"

I didn't have to say a word. The class answered for me.

"Yes!"

"Like Hell, yes!"

"You can't leave us Mr. Val!!"

Val looked mildly stunned at the display of affection.

"You can't let Randal come back," I said defiantly. Lucrecia looked like she wanted to say something.

"So how do you propose we stop Randal from coming back?"

"Uh...."

"My point precisely!"

He cleared his throat and reread the sheet. "Randal wants me to talk about Shakespeare..." Val immediately proceeded to launch into a yarn of anecdotes having to do with Shakespeare's works, early Victorian fashion, Val's childhood, and tea.

At some point, while Val was talking lovingly about tea varieties, I had an idea. I raised my hand.

"Yes, miss?"

"They have tea in the staffroom."

His eyes lit up, "Tea?" He looked at me suspiciously, "What kind of tea?"

"Uh... I think they have lemon tea and chamomile at lest. Oh, and some green tea. And probably a few other interesting flavors."

"Hmmm...." Val pondered this. "You're sure?"

"Yep."

Val left the classroom happily. Stopping at the door to ask if he was supposed to leave someone in charge, and when he was told that he should, he pointed at me, evidently to reward me for my tea-knowledge.

"Nix, how do you know that?" Lucrecia asked me.

"My math teacher drinks tea from the staffroom."

"And you ask her what kind of tea she has."

"No! I can recognize the little taggy things on the teabags."

"You drink that much tea?"

I nodded sheepishly, but I suddenly remembered something. "Hey, uh…" I looked around. "You guys remember how the one part of the wall sounded all hollow?"

"No one cares, Nix." Cloud said angrily.

"I care!"

"No one _else_ cares." Cloud carefully revised. He returned to his new hobby of glaring at Sephiroth.

I rolled my eyes and went to find the wall-segment that had seemed suspicious. I tapped the wall, looked around it's perimeter, then looked around the room, as though expecting to find a little switch in the wall like in _Phantom of the Opera_. Not finding said switch, I decided to knock the cheap panel of wall out.

Vincent walked up behind me. "What are you trying to do?"

"Break the wall down." I said, charging at it again.

"Oh," Vincent said, and watched me for a second. "Do you want any help with that?"

"Uh..." I looked at him sheepishly. "Yah."

Vincent stepped up next to the wall, looked at it for a second, tapped it, then smashed it with his fist. The hit was so well-placed that as he stepped aside it fell forward into the room.

I looked from the wall on the floor to Vincent, delighted. "Thanks!"

"It's the little things, huh?" Vincent commented to Lucrecia, who had come over to find out what the commotion was about.

I looked into the dark rectangle where the wall-panel had resided. I gasped, staring into the dark hallway, "Great Goddess…"

Some of the others came up behind me and I heard Sephiroth whisper "Masemune…"

"This… This is where she's keeping the weapons…"

The Buster Sword and Masemune held pride of place due to their size. Cerberus was also there along with a shuriken and a group of nefarious looking pointy things I guessed belonged to Yuffie. Tifa's clawed gloves, Cid's spear, and Aerith's staff were there too, completing the set of confiscated weapons. There was just one unidentified weapon there, a sinisterly large kitchen knife. It had a dried reddish brown residue on it, like dried blood combined with rust.

As everyone grabbed their respective weapons, I stared at the knife, then turned to look at Lucrecia, who was still standing next to me. "What do you think.... that is?" I asked.

"Tonberry?" Tifa suggested.

I looked at her incredulously. "It's about the size of a tonberry's head!"

She shrugged and went to hide the gloves in her bag.

Cid, Aerith and Cloud seemed to be discussing a similar dilemma.

"We could leave them here for now..." Cid suggested.

"How would we get to them then?" Cloud asked

"We could hide them somewhere else, somewhere outside where we could find them later." Aerith suggested.

Cloud looked at the Buster Sword incredulously.

"We could hide them _really well_."

I was admiring various weapons that I had only dreamed of seeing in person, but was shooed off from looking at Masemune. "If you get fingerprints on my sword I _will _kill you." Sephiroth assured me.

Cloud had finally accepted Aerith's idea, and they planned to sneak out and hide them now, before Val got back.

However, just before reaching the door, Val returned. There was much hast hiding of objects.

Val looked around at us suspiciously.

"We weren't doing anything bad!" I said, waving my hands over my head.

Mr. Val glared at me suspiciously. "You're lying!" He didn't seem to have noticed the blade of Masemune that was trailing out behind Sephiroth.

"Uh... okay." I said, half-inventing something as quickly as I could. "A few of us needed to go... uh... put something somewhere... so we could get to it later. But, uh... they need to do it before the end of the class."

Val looked at me again, slightly less suspiciously. "Okay," he said, "but do whatever it is quickly."

Everyone looked at each other in shock. Cloud darted out the door quickly, and Cid followed nonchalantly.

Aerith hung back at the door. "Sephiroth?"

He looked off in another direction, ignoring her.

"Do you have a better plan?" She asked.

Sephiroth didn't respond, so Aerith came back into the room, grabbed Sephiroth's upper arm and dragged him out of the room.

"Hey! Hey, _what_?" He asked angrily, trying to pull away and still seem like he didn't care.

"Oh! I'm not going to let you get the rest of us into trouble! Be thankful I'm not pulling on you _hair_!"

"Hey—!"

The door shut behind them.

There was an awkward pause.

"So, Mr. Val, what were you saying about Shakespeare and tea?" I asked.

Everyone who was still in the room groaned.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTE: I've been having trouble updating this frequently because… uh… school sucks.

And because I had major writer's block on this chapter. Until a Fairy of Darkness came to me and asked if _he_ could be the substitute teacher…

Oh, and enjoy whatever crazy gift-giving holiday you may or may not celebrate.


	31. Day 24: Part 2

(Still) Day 24

* * *

Disclaimer: All characters, names, and related indicia are property of SQUARE ENIX! So don't sue me.

* * *

I was sitting in my room, pretending that I was reading, but I was really making shadow puppets in the candle light. I had exhausted all the usual fodder and was vainly attempting to construct a shadow chocobo when the phone rang.

"Hello?" I answered the phone curiously. Almost no one ever called me and very few people had my cell number.

"Hey! Nix?!"

"Oh, heya Yuffie…"

"Nix, you have to save me! The power's out!! We're all gonna die! Sephiroth is gonna _KILL ME_!!"

I sighed. "I'll try to be over in—"

Yuffie started to scream, but the phone hung up abruptly, which was worrying.

"—a few minutes…?"

I snapped my phone shut, blew out the candle and ran downstairs grabbing my coat.

"Mom, can I go over to my friend's house? They're… uh… having some trouble with the power outage…"

"Which friend?"

I thought fast and decided on part of the truth. "Uh… Yuffie. I can walk."

"Take one of the lanterns." She insisted.

I did and also grabbed my pocketknife in an attempt to complete the tonberry-ish effect.

When I got to the house, I didn't have to even open the door to hear the conflict inside.

"Yuffie! Where is my fire materia, damn it!?!"

"I DIDN'T TAKE IT!"

"I DON'T BELIEVE YOU!"

"Both of you SHUT UP!!" Vincent shouted, sounding fed up.

"NO!!" Sephiroth and Yuffie both yelled back.

I knocked on the door. Aerith opened it for me. "Oh, Nix. I'm glad you came! These two have been fighting for almost an hour…"

"Really?"

Sephiroth and Yuffie were snarling at each other again. I ignored them.

"Where's Red?" I asked suddenly, noticing the absence of his flaming tail in the dark.

"I don't know…" Aerith said, slightly worried, "We've looked for him, but he left without saying anything... he's usually not like that…"

I decided that something needed to be done about the situation. I tapped Sephiroth on the shoulder. "Have you seen Red XIII?"

"What?"

"Nanaki! He's gone!"

"So?"

I sighed. "Do you not see the significance of this? Red XIII and the materia are both gone!"

Cloud glowered, but Tifa was the one who spoke up. They had both apparently returned from searching for the materia through the house.

"You're implying that Red XIII took the materia?"

"Yah," I said slowly, "really, it's the only thing we can guess at this point."

Tifa put a hand on her hip and narrowed her eyes in the exceedingly intimidating way that only women like her can. "We trust Red XIII. You can't say—"

I held up a hand, silencing Tifa. Several puzzle pieces had just fit together in my mind. "Yes… yes I can say that… Aerith!" I turned to her quickly. "Your hair ribbon!"

"What?" She compulsively touched the back of her hair.

"The White Materia! Do you still have it?!"

"Yes…" She said softly.

I grabbed her arm and dove once more into the water andthick darkness outside the house.

"Aerith, where were you when you guys arrived?"

"Oh…" She ran ahead of me, understanding what I had realized. In fact she probably had a much better understanding of the ethereal, abstract concept.

We arrived in the ring of tall evergreens I could see from Sephiroth's window. One of the trees had a barely healed notch in it.

The center of the tree ring was illuminated by several colored spheres. A glint of orange kept flicking back and forth through the trees, occasionally illuminating the single reflective lens of an eye. Nanaki looked at us, then looked back down at the orbs and pawed at them, rearranging the materia.

Aerith untied the ribbon in her hair. "I think you forgot something, Nanaki." She tossed the white materia into the pile with the others. There was a quick flash and then all the materia glowed brighter.

"Don't touch it," Aerith instructed me.

I recoiled my reaching hand sheepishly. "Why not? It's so shiny!"

"Because I don't know what it could do yet…"

Nanaki looked up at her. "I was not sure what it would do, but I thought I ought to try. If possible, I was hoping to stop the fighting between Sephiroth and Cloud… though, I don't know if any progress would instead encourage them."

Aerith nodded, rubbing her upper arms like she was cold.

Apparently everyone had followed me, because they were now arriving in the clearing.

"Look! Materia!" Yuffie said, pointing. She turned to Sephiroth who had arrived a moment after her. "See? I _didn't_ take your materia!!"

"I still don't trust you." He growled.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

Suddenly, Cloud leaped out of the surrounding darkness and onto Sephiroth, apparently making an attempt at causing bodily harm.

"What the—" Sephiroth tried to grab Cloud off his back, but Cloud held on tight, snarling.

Sephiroth magic-ed Masemune out of nowhere and immediately slashed at Cloud with it.

"Sephiroth!" Lucrecia had arrived and immediately began telling Sephiroth off.

"Cloud, seriously, stop." Aerith said.

Sephiroth finally threw Cloud to the ground and positioned the blade of Masemune across his neck, looking at Lucrecia defiantly like a small child threatening to drag his finger across the icing of a birthday cake.

Lucrecia shook her head and turned her attention to the materia, the light from which was slowly arching up into a two-dimensional oval. "What… is this?" She asked.

"I don't know but…" Aerith rubbed her arms again, "when we were brought here…" she said, "To this … _world_, I suppose… I had the same feeling…"

Lucrecia was nodding, brow furrowed. "So… Do you think this could be achieving… essentially the same effect?"

"Wait… Wait, I think I get it!" I said.

They both ignored me.

"The only thing I don't think I understand is… well, this world."

"It's a parent-universe," I proposed, "People here…" I pointed down at the ground, "_wrote_ your universe."

Aerith nodded, looking at me as though surprised I was able to get a grip on what she was talking about.

"So, when that much energy was congealed in one place…" Lucrecia said.

"And by collecting almost all of our world's power here, in the form of materia…"

"Wait, so we've opened another wormhole!?"

"Not a 'wormhole', really, but…. theoretically, yes."

Aerith nodded. "This," She motioned to the arc, which was now nearly the size of a door. "Will bring us back to our world… and _might_ change us back to… our normal ages, I guess." She looked at Sephiroth, as though looking for his opinion of the idea.

He shrugged. "I… really don't understand what I did… but, yeah. It'd probably put everything back to normal…"

Aerith asked Sephiroth a few odd questions, but most of them he couldn't answer due, evidently, to having forgotten.

I raised my hand, "What would happen if I walked through it?"

Lucrecia looked thoughtful. "Possibly nothing… or you could even be brought to our world… but, there is also a good likelihood that it could kill you."

"Uh… I don't like those odds." I edged away from the glowing doorway.

"Well…" Aerith looked at Cloud, who was standing at the very edge of the tree circle, apparently licking his wounded pride. "This is what you wanted, right Cloud?"

Cloud nodded, but had a very unsure look in his eye. Aerith giggled. "Don't want to go now?"

"No… I do, it's just…"

"You can always wait."

"For what though?"

Aerith looked at me. "Wait until the year is over, it's only a bit longer. Then you can leave. We'll say… you moved."

She smiled, and took the white materia out of the little formation, breaking the arc.

"For now, let's go back before we all freeze." She giggled again and started off towards the dilapidated manor.

"So…" Vincent stepped up next to me, watching Lucrecia and Aerith continuing to talk fervently as they walked away. "The half-Ancient girl and Dr. Crescent figured it out," Vincent said, he looked at me. "Where does that leave you?"

"I dunno… Random obsessed fangirl?"

He laughed softly and walked off into the darkness, leaving me alone in the pool of faint light that was fading as Yuffie silently and inconspicuously took the materia, one by one.

* * *

Author Note: I've almost concluded the plot... I think. I feel kind of like I'm trying to stitch something small, furry and alive together and as I do so keep finding that I don't have all the necessary pieces. That's a gross analogy, sorry. But anyway, that means I'm _trying_ to tie up all the loose ends. Or, _odds and ends,_ as it were.  
Oh, and my sister wrote half a sentence of this chapter for me. Credit where credit is due, right?


	32. Day 25

Day 25

* * *

Disclaimer: 'Kay, so Randal, Nix, Rainsford and Jake are original characters. No one else belongs to me because they are either based strongly off real people or are the intellectual property of Square Enix.

* * *

I raised my hand.

Randal glared at me and I stared back, determined.

"Brent?"

"Why can't we read _A Comedy of Errors_?"

I earned several detention points and a not-quite-reprimanding look from Lucrecia.

Randal glared around at us, "In order to begin preparing you for your year-end exams..." There was a badly suppressed groan from a majority of the students. "I will be assigning you an end-of-year research project."

I zoned out as she explained the premise of the project, doodling little caricatures of Randal being killed in various brutal ways, many of which involved knowledge gained from particularly nice episodes of Mythbusters.

"…It is to be between ten and fifteen pages long and is due in two weeks, after which you will complete a study packet and then take your final exam..."

I passed my doodle to Lucrecia, who smiled at the childishly graphite-rendered gore.

"_Any ideas what you're going to do for the project?_"

"_Not a clue. I wasn't listening._"

Lucrecia glared at me. We were supposed to be brainstorming ideas for research paper topics, but I was much more interested in note passing.

"_Nix, you should be at least a little more focused in class..._"

"_Hey, this is the only class I nap in. I'm fine in all my other classes… But, anyhow, did you hear there's an assembly today?_"

"_Are you plotting something, Nix?_"

"_Yes, always._"

* * *

Randal slunk out of the room silently, presumably to get coffee.

There were a few moments of awkward silence after the door clicked shut.

"What now?" Cloud asked, sounding cautious.

"I brought materia!" Yuffie said happily. Everyone whose materia it was glared at her and she slid down in her seat. Her enthusiasm had vanished in a flash.

Sephiroth stood up and walked over to her to glare at her properly. "Give me back my materia." He paused, "_Please._"

"Who says?"

"I say."

"Oh, yeah?" Yuffie put her hands on her hips. "You can't boss me! Who put you in charge?"

Sephiroth started to say something else, but I spoke first.

"Yeah, who _is_ in charge, actually?" I asked.

"I am." Sephiroth said confidently.

"Not a chance, Sephiroth." Cloud had stood and was glaring across the room at Sephiroth.

"Didn't your mothers ever tell you to play nice with the other children?" I muttered. Then, louder, I said, "Okay, if we're so idiotically petty that we _need _a leader, let's put it to a diplomatic vote!" Everyone stared at me. "…Unless you all have a better idea."

"I think it's a good idea," Cloud said assertively, glaring at Sephiroth, looking for an objection.

"I don't see anything wrong with it." Sephiroth folded his arms.

"Fine." Cloud said, sounding as though his subtext was "_Have it your way!_"

"They argue like an old married couple..." I commented to Lucrecia.

"More like kindergarteners, I think," She said.

I nodded, agreeing with her.

Cloud was tearing up a piece of binder paper to act as makeshift ballots. These were given out and written on, then handed0 to Lucrecia, who had evidently been judged most trustworthy. She turned the entire stack writing-up on her desk and arranged them so that the results could be tallied.

The paper with Yuffie's handwriting on it said, "Yuffie!" and had hearts on it, and two ballots said "Cid." Three of the little papers said, "Cloud" and three of them said "Lucrecia."

"Tie." Cloud announced, looking at Lucrecia.

"No!" I corrected, having just finished counting all the little papers, "We're still missing one!" I looked at Sephiroth, who crumpled up his ballot paper and tossed it carelessly into the pile with the others.

When I un-crumpled it, it obviously had Lucrecia's name on it.

Cloud looked angry.

I refrained from mentioning aloud that _four_ was not _technically_ a _majority_ of _eleven_.

Lucrecia looked shocked, and slightly honored at having been elected. She turned to me. "You said earlier that you were plotting something, what was it?"

I was surprised that she wanted to hear my idea. "Uh... just general pandemonium, I think. I thought that after Randal left we could all leave and run around the school like maniacal headless chickens until the assembly. You know, freak people out to the maximum degree… allowable by school rules."

She nodded. "Anyone who thinks that's a good idea, go ahead." Everyone stared at her. "... Just don't hurt anyone."

A couple people laughed in an almost relieved way.

There was silence for a moment, then Aerith turned to Yuffie and asked firmly, "Can we have our materia back, please, Yuffie?"

The ninja girl looked around warily at the number of people wearing angry scowls.

"Uh... sure." Yuffie dashed for the door. "But you have to catch me first!"

"Oh, no you don't... Get _back_ here!" Vincent growled, charging after her out into the foyer. Aerith followed, though weather she was planning to rescue Yuffie or whack her over the head with her staff was anyone's guess.

Several more students trickled out in a similar fashion, Tifa and Barret left following Cloud after he muttered something incoherent about going to get their materia.

When a relative lull had resumed I turned to Lucrecia quizzically. "Who are you and what have you done with Lucrecia Crescent?"

She laughed. "I'm not _ill_ if that's what you mean... Vincent convinced me that I was being too... what did he say, 'uptight'?" She shrugged.

"Oh."

The only people left in the room now were myself, Lucrecia, Reeve and Cait Sith.

"Nix, I had an idea..." Reeve said hesitantly, "But it might involve losing your music player..."

I shrugged. "S'okay, I guess… not like I can use it anyhow."

He showed me the screen and I smirked, saying, "Perfect."

Reeve left, Cait Sith plunking along behind him and I followed, grabbing Lucrecia's wrist.

"Nix, wha—"

"If someone else were left in here I'd let you stay, but as it is we're the _last_ people here, so _c'mon!!_ …Before Randal gets back."

_

* * *

_We found Vincent, who had apparently managed to recover some (but not all) of his materia. He glared at me when I asked if Yuffie had given it back in the wrong order. I decided it was safer for me to leave Lucrecia in charge of trying to soothe him, so I left to see who else I could find.

I was about to give up and drop in on a class where I knew a couple of my friends were, when I suddenly ran into Yuffie, nearly literally. "Here!" Yuffie shouted, shoving a green sphere into my hand. "It's a mastered thunder…" She looked down all three hallways, and then darted down the one that led back outside.

"Wait, Yuffie, is this Sephiroth's?!" I shouted, but the ninja was gone.

I shrugged and decided to make an attempt to add chaos to the scene. "THUNDAGA!" I shouted commandingly, not really expecting anything, but hoping optimistically. Amazingly, the spell was effectively cast and the quiet of the hallway was rent by crackling electricity.

I put my non-materia holding hand over my mouth. "Omigod! I casted magic!!" I turned around and was startled to find Sephiroth standing over me only a few inches away from my face. "Hi, Sephiroth! I used materia!" I pointed at the thunder-scarred hallway, smiling brightly.

"I'm sure your mother is so proud." Sephiroth said darkly, holding his hand out for his materia.

I put the greenish sphere in his palm sheepishly.

"Come on," he said, turning in the direction of the gym, "Everyone's at the stupid assembly."

I followed, struggling to keep up with the much taller Sephiroth and to keep my mouth shut.

"Nix, please stop skipping. You're embarrassing me."

"Sorry."

* * *

I heard loud music blasting from the Gym where the assembly was supposed to be startin in a few minutes, which was surprising, as it was an official assembly,which translates to falling asleep through a series of announcements and awards, not loud music. I only had to hear a few notes clearly before giggling and putting a hand over my mouth.

"What?" Sephiroth asked.

I groaned. "Reeve…"

"What?" He asked again, this time with an inflection implying that he wanted an explanation.

"_Another Brick in the Wall_. It's a song… basically about schoolroom tyranny." I laughed. "Just listen to the lyrics."

I opened the door and slipped into the rowdy Gym. Cait Sith was standing guard outside the door to the sound control room.

"Heya! Nix, Sephiroth! Ever'one else's run off somewhere..." He looked around and I turned to see that a few of the others were starting to congregate in another inconspicuous corner of the gym. I hurried around the perimeter, hoping the early-arriving students wouldn't notice and Sephiroth followed a great distance behind me, trying to look like he'd never seen me before in his life.

"Are you aware that you are the worst note-passer in the class?" Vincent was asking Lucrecia when I arrived.

"And how did you know that?" She asked.

"Uh..." Vincent said awkwardly.

"So _that's _why you never get your homework done during class…" She said slyly.

Vincent turned his face away from her and mouthed a swear word. Lucrecia giggled.

"Hello, Nix," she said to me, "Have we caused enough trouble for your liking?"

I looked around at the scene of general disorder in the Gym and nodded approvingly. "Yep. Quite pleasingly inharmonious. You can go back to being uptight now, Lucrecia."

She gave me a disapproving look and I smirked and turned to the others.

"Everyone got here before me?"

"Reeve's still working on doing something with the sound... but, yeah."

I folded my arms. "So... what now?"

Several people shrugged.

I raised my hand. "Does anyone have an idea on how to get out of staying at this assembly, 'cause I for one am not too enthused to watch more bald guys unicycling."

Lucrecia rolled her eyes. "This is an official assembly. Not like last time..."

"Then it's gonna be even _more boring_ than bald unicyclists!?"

"Hey, guys!" we turned. Vincent's expression instantly darkened when he saw it was Jake running up to us.

"What the hell are you trying to do, get Randal to kill you all too?!"

"And what's that supposed to mean?" I said darkly, stepping in between Vincent and Jake so they couldn't hurt each other without killing me, which, in retrospect, may not have been the most effective deterrent. "Us _too?_"

"Would you believe me if I told you that Randal killed someone?" Jake whispered, sounding like he was trying to be dramatic.

I had a sudden visual-memory of the knife we'd found in the classroom. "D'you mean—? That kid that was rumored to have been found dead, but no one believes it actually happened?"

"Yah, I've told other people, but no one believes me…"

"… We believe you," Cloud said suddenly. "We found the murder weapon…"

"You did?" Jake asked, but Cloud was already out of earshot.

I laughed at him, running to try to catch up with the others. "Tough luck!"

* * *

We _did _get the principal first so that we could validate our suspicions about the demon of a teacher, but it was Sephiroth who kicked open the locked door.

"That must be why she's afraid of undead stuff," I said happily to Lucrecia, "Legend has it that the kid's dying words were, 'I'll be back.'…Or something the like of that. See, this was before _Terminator _and—"

"'Legend has it,' Nix?" Lucrecia asked skeptically.

"Oh, and when has_ Lucrecia Crescent _ever believed in _legends?_" If it was known to be physically possible to dodge a glare, I'd have attempted it.

Meanwhile, the wall had been opened using the same method as before, but slightly less carefully. When Rainsford saw the knife he told us to go outside with the other students to the assembly.

However, Mr. Rainsford came out into the hall to speak to us a moment later. He turned to me. "I believe that based on all I've seen, I have reason enough to get The Randal fired—well, probably arrested—and…" His voice trailed off lightly.

"And?" I asked, "And, and, and?!"

"…possibly get you all A grades in the class."

"YES!" I made a motion of celebration.

Sephiroth was looking at me as though trying to place something.

* * *

After ditching out on the assembly, the rest of the school went back to its normal routine.

"Get outta here, kid!" Sephiroth shouted, glowering. The group of younger students jumped, glanced at his formidable expression in terror and quickly scurried off the patch of grass. Though I thought Sephiroth was probably just bullying people smaller than him for the hell of it, it was partially true. Almost everyone else in the English class was either sitting or standing somewhere in the grassy part of the courtyard. The only people not accounted for were Vincent and Lucrecia, but there absence was easily explainable.

As for me, I was standing off to one side with Yuffie, Sephiroth standing a way off from us, leaning against a stone wall casually. It was surprisingly sunny, warm and pleasant. Typical near-summer weather.

"So what's the consensus?" I asked no one in particular, watching as Aerith tried to convince Nanaki to let her put the daisy chain around his neck. Cloud was already wearing one, grudgingly and I was pondering photographing him for blackmail purposes.

Sephiroth shrugged. "Who knows? Everyone is going to make their own choice." Sephiroth ran his fingers through his hair, causing it to shimmer in the summer sun. "As for me, it's not exactly like I have much of a place anymore on Gaea... But I don't think Barret is going to be happy if he's not 'helping the planet'... or whatever the hell it is..." He shrugged again, like he wanted us to forget he said anything.

"What about you, Yuffie?"

Yuffie looked like something was bothering her. "I don't know. I like it here... but I want to be able to go home to Wuti."

Sephiroth looked down, "People like me and Barret... we have this decision easy. We know where we ought to belong, but some of you..." He looked up at Aerith too, smirking subtly as she decided she should try to sell her fifteen or so daisy chains to other students. "Some of you belong in both of these worlds."

There was a long, pensive pause. "So, you're staying here? In school?" I asked Sephiroth, trying hard not to sound over-excited.

"Yah." He gave me a sidewise look through is bangs. "Hopefully next year will be as eventful as this one, eh?"

_Famous last words, Sephiroth… _

* * *

Author Note, I suppose:

This story has come to be a bit of a bane to my artistic existence. It was badly planned from the start, and I only finished because I swore to myself I would. I may or may not write a sequel to it, (I have a plot and a couple chapters, but rather severely lack the motivation, so probably not.) So… I'd like opinions on weather a sequel would be blasphemous to the art of writing.

Thanks very much for wasting however much of your life reading this, anyhow.

With all due respect and affection,

—Nix.

* * *

-Ω-


	33. The Beginning

Sephiroth staggered forward, trying to ignore the voice in his head. He shook his head to try to make it go away. The blood gushing from his eyes landed in his hair and on the walls. The blood from the gashes in his chest spattered the floor. How had he gotten them? He didn't know. He didn't care. He would live.

_Please, Sephiroth… You'll just… more hurt… dear… no one… please… _

Sephiroth slumped against the wall again. It was no use. The voice was swimming in and out of focus, just like the red tinged hallway around him.

_Sephiroth… coming… forgive… dear… please… Sephiroth!_

The voice was pleading, crying. He wiped more blood out of his eyes and rose. He had to find the way into the Mako Reactor. That was where he could find the Lifestream. He smiled. He would use the Lifestream's power directly.

* * *

There it was. Just as horridly peaceful as when he had first plunged into its depths. Peaceful on the outside, but within… Sephiroth didn't want to think about that.

Another voice was talking in his head, more coherently than the voice he had been tuning out for uncounted hours. This voice had a similar eerie quality of being familiar, though he knew he had never heard it before.

_Sephiroth. You know right from wrong. Is what you're doing really going to work?_

He shook his head to try to shut this voice up. At least the other voice was quieted now, still crying, not speaking. Sephiroth leapt across the sea of greenish glow and landed, catlike, on a crossbeam holding one of the mechanical parts of the reactor above the pseudo liquid below. The movement would have looked supremely graceful, but something felt wrong to Sephiroth. His balance was off, he landed too hard, something wasn't right.

_Sephiroth, is this what you do with a second chance?_

Would that sickeningly sweet voice just shut up?

* * *

"Damn it Fenrir…" The spiky haired man hunched himself lower on the motorbike, trying to convince it to move faster. He needed to get to Midgar. Now. It was times like this he wished he still had a chocobo.

Cloud took one hand off of the steering and reached for something at his waist. He opened the sleek, new, black phone one-handed and called the first person on his speed dial. It rang only once.

"Hello?"

"Tifa. It's Cloud."

"Cloud? Is something wrong?" She had heard the worried note in his voice.

"Yah… Listen, Tifa, I'm not… crazy. Right?"

"Of course not! Cloud, what's wrong?"

"I… I saw… Sephiroth…"

"What?"

"Yah. He was headed… for Midgar."

"…I know what you're going to do Cloud. Don't."

"I have to."

"Cloud… at least… don't go alone."

Cloud brought Fenrir to a skidding halt, thinking.

"Tifa, I—"

"Cloud!"

"… Alright… I'll call up the old crew."

"I'll start calling people too. We'll meet here first… Okay?"

"Alright. Bye, Tifa."

"Cloud…?"

"Yah?"

"Goodbye."

Cloud hung up and looked into the distance. He could see the hulking shape of ruined Midgar framed by mountains. He dialed another very familiar phone number. "Hey, Barrett…"

* * *

He would never listen, she decided. He would never, ever have any single thought process that did not end with death and destruction. "Sephiroth…" She whispered, looking at him pleadingly. He couldn't see her. She moved closer to him. "Sephiroth, you don't know what you're doing. I don't think that even I could do what you're trying to do, and I'm a Cetra."

Sephiroth's eyes widened withsome kind of subconscious recognition. "_I… I am greater than… the Ancients… I am…_"

The other presence had started sobbing again, she tried to comfort it. She didn't know who it was, but... It took a very strong determination to separate from the Lifestream like this.

If Aerith had had breath she would probably have sobbed as well. She looked into the depths of the Lifestream and saw her mother's eyes pleading to her not to do this. "But…" She looked at Cloud, miles away, sitting on the ground next to his motorcycle, crying silently. "But, I have to… For my friends…"

* * *

Cloud climbed down a ladder into Mako Reactor 0. It was exactly the same as every other reactor he had (or hadn't) ever been into. Most of his team was still above him. He leapt down the last three rungs and turned around. He almost jumped backwards into the ladder in shock.

"What?" Vincent asked.

"Didn't know you were there."

".......We have to hurry." He said. He turned abruptly and continued forward.

Cloud shook his head, sometimes Vincent could be so…

There was a loud noise of something landing next to him.

"Ouch!"

"Oh. Hi, Yuffie."

"What's with Vince? He's acting even weirder than usual."

"I don't know."

* * *

Vincent was climbing another ladder, but stopped. For the third time since he'd entered Midgar he felt what he could only describe as a "shockwave" of energy.

"I… I'm coming." He whispered. He leapt to the top of the ladder, completely ignoring the last six rungs, and broke into a flat out run on the rusted metal catwalk.

* * *

Vincent Valentine was the first person to arrive in the physical vicinity. The moment he did, the other energy who Aerith couldn't recognize began to cry even harder.

"…I see," Aerith whispered. "Go to him."

She did and Aerith turned to Sephiroth, but she was too late.

"Sephiroth." Cloud was shouting across the space at him. "Sephiroth, you… you don't give up, do you?"

"Give up?" Sephiroth asked almost hazily, "Give up what… Cloud?"

Cloud started to respond, but realized that it was a rhetorical question. Sephiroth was still talking.

He looked at where Aerith had stationed herself, as though he could see her. "If I… Will everyone…?" There was almost a look of concern in his eyes.

"Yes, everyone will probably die, including you."

Sephiroth looked down into the Lifestream. He watched a dark droplet of blood fall into the strange ooze. The blood floated, but… as he watched, the unusually dark quality of his blood faded and the drop looked almost normal.

His eyes widened, he looked into Aerith's eyes. "Help me." He grabbed her arm and dove once more into the Lifestream. Aerith gasped, shocked that he had grabbed her. She was less than a ghost to the living.

Sephiroth gathered energy around himself, sifting through it for what he needed.

* * *

"Good luck."

Cloud looked into the mass of energy above him. Sephiroth gasped and tried to speak, but couldn't.

Aerith smiled, giggling. "Good luck to you to..."

* * *

~FIN~

* * *

-Ω-~-Ω-


End file.
